World Cup teams have been arriving in Brazil over the past few weeks and you would think all they cared about was winning. Turns out, for many teams, it takes a lot more than just showing up to get them ready. It takes Jacuzzis, specialty soaps and lots of video games.
According to a report in the Independent, hotels around Brazil have been given a list by several participating teams. The list outlines the special needs of players – crucial for determining the success in the marquee football event.
Here are five of the most weird and bizarre demands from teams from around the global leading up to the FIFA 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
5. England – One of the three restaurants in their hotel to be reserved exclusively. Two floors having 64 rooms have also been reserved for the English team at the Royal Tulip in Rio de Janeiro. Not even England’s World Cup WAGs can interrupt them. Players only!
4. Switzerland – A beach studio must be built for the Switzerland team to conduct TV interviews. Like many other teams, they have also demanded their own national TV channels in each room.
3. Portugal – Portugal needs six bodyguards, but four of them are just for Cristiano Ronaldo.
2. Germany – Germany didn’t want to go through a middleman for demands so they built their own training center and hotel. The team is based in a gated community with 13 residential build-ups, 65 rooms, a football field and a pressroom in the state of Bahia.
1. France – The French team reserved the JP Hotel in Sao Paulo and asked the management to provide identical rooms to every player – down to the paint color. The team has even reportedly asked for two varieties of liquid soap (because France doesn’t have bar soap) – one for bathing and one especially for their hands! The hotel must also have halal meat because many players are Muslim, which requires all meat be from animals, which have not suffered. Because, France.
Here are some other interesting requests…. Alegeria wants the Koran in in every room, Ecuador wants Ecuadorian bananas in every room, every day, while Colombia wants Sao Pualo FC (soccer club) to provide youth players to practice against, and Japan wants a Jacuzzi tub in every room.
The most popular demand however has been for video games.
While France, Ecuador and Costa Rica will settle for the construction of a video game room in the hotel, Portugal demands that every room is stocked with video games and consoles.
In all, Brazil hotels will host 736 superstars across 27 cities through the course of the World Cup, so let’s see if they can keep all these egos and interests intact.
