The Rembrandt celebrates the World Cup

Football; some love it, some simply like it, others have not much interest at all.  However, with FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014 you couldn’t really avoid it.

Having 27 different nationalities working at The Rembrandt and several of these being represented in Brazil, we wanted to do something for those who wanted to participate, but at the same time wasn’t too intrusive on those that had no interest!

Two days before the first match between Brazil and Croatia in Sao Paulo we asked the question

‘Who do you think is going to be the winner of FIFA World Cup 2014?!!!’

Slips of paper were provided asking for name, department and their choice of the winning team; and once completed were deposited into a sealed box, which was removed prior to kick off of the first match.

44 people put pen to paper and committed to a team.  National pride went out of the window!  Some did select their national team, however many did not…  One person even selected Cote D’Ivoire simply because their flag was similar to their own country, which hadn’t made the finals!

The staff canteen was festooned with flags of the countries playing and posters made of the winning team selections with name and department and put on the notice board.  Many a lunch break was spent working out which flag belonged to which country and on the choices of their colleagues of who they thought would win.

The most popular choices were Brazil, Spain, Argentina and Germany.  With Spain crashing out, there was hope for some of the less popular; The Netherlands, Belgium, Algeria.

With Brazil’s annihilation in the semi-final, the favourite was out.  The winners, Germany, had been picked by eight of the original 44.  However, how many of them had any link with Germany?  Possibly only one….