Neymar gives Brazil a mighty scare ahead of the big day

PHOTO | VANDERLEI ALMEIDA Brazilian National team striker Neymar (C-bottom) receives medical attention during a training session at the squad's Granja Comary training complex, in Teresopolis, 90 km from downtown Rio de Janeiro, on June 9, 2014, ahead of the FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014 tournament.

What you need to know:

  • The nation briefly holds its breath after striker goes down clutching his right ankle, but the incident turns out to be nothing more than a momentary scare
  • The fact that the 22-year-old forward went down when none of his national team colleagues were near him suggested a potential problem, just three days ahead of Brazil’s opening World Cup game against Croatia in Sao Paulo.

RIO DE JANEIRO

Brazil briefly held its breath when Neymar went down clutching his right ankle in training on Monday, but the incident turned out to be nothing more than a momentary scare.

The fact that the 22-year-old forward went down when none of his national team colleagues were near him suggested a potential problem, just three days ahead of Brazil’s opening World Cup game against Croatia in Sao Paulo.

However, the striker quickly got back up and finished the training game at the Selecao’s Granja Comary base in Teresopolis. A sprain to Neymar’s right ankle earlier this year sidelined him from Barcelona’s ranks for just under four weeks.

Monday’s training session indicated that coach Luiz Felipe Scolari will send out the same side that beat Serbia 1-0 in last Friday’s final warm-up friendly in Sao Paulo when they tackle the Croatians.

It is also the same team that beat Spain 3-0 in last year’s Confederations Cup final in Rio de Janeiro.

The XI comfortably beat Brazil’s supposed substitutes, with David Luiz, Hulk and Fred all scoring from open play and Luiz Gustavo and Neymar — proving that he had overcome his earlier knock — both finding the net from set-pieces.

Global football leaders descend on Sao Paulo on Tuesday amid tensions over subway workers’ new threat to spoil Brazil’s World Cup party by going on strike the day of the opening match.

DAMAGING STRIKE

Fifa opens its 64th Congress under the cloud of a corruption scandal surrounding the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, which has drawn rebukes from some of the world football body’s biggest sponsors.

Sao Paulo is meanwhile facing headaches of its own after subway workers threatened to resume a damaging strike tomorrow, the day the world’s eyes turn to the Brazilian mega-city for the start of a World Cup whose build-up has been plagued by delays, overspending and protests.

The workers voted Monday to suspend their five-day-old strike, which had caused massive traffic jams and cut off subway service to Corinthians Arena, the stadium hosting the opening ceremony and kick-off.

Officials are hard-pressed to avoid more problems as a billion people worldwide tune in to the game on TV. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and 12 heads of state and government will be in the stadium, which workers are rushing to finish on time.

Work on the 12 host stadiums has been overshadowed by accidents that have killed eight workers, including three at Corinthians Arena. That together with construction delays, ballooning budgets and the shelving of promised infrastructure projects has fueled anger over the World Cup.