10 Reputations On The Line At World Cup 2014

10 Days until the 2014 FIFA World Cup begins. Just one calender month plus a day: 12th June- 13th July will determine not only the new (or still) Champions of the World for the next 4 years but will define or redefine the standing legacies, reputations and stock value of the 736 players whom are locked in to compete at this year's show-piece event. A month and a day in the life of a footballer is nothing. Injuries may come and go, form may peak and dip, goals might flow, sex scandals break and by the time it's done, many of the world's best will be £450,000+ better off than they were before. Yup, it's ridiculous. In a career that will span over a decade (or two, in some cases), a month and a day is nothing. Yet, some stories were never meant to be written by time. Maradona's brace, Zidane's disgrace; €œThat save€, Baggio's pain; Rossi's 'trick, Bergkamp's flick and Carlos Alberto scored a goal in 1970. These stories defy time. They defy time in their making and in the way they're remembered. In this month and a day, 736 players are faced with a chance to rewrite the history books. Paolo Rossi went from a relative nothing to a superstar. Romario decided the world needed to know his name. Zidane elected to add a new colour (red) to his intricate mosaic and Andres Iniesta chose to- for a brief moment in time- be the one man on the planet that over 1 billion people had their eyes upon. With that in mind, let's take a look a 10 figures whose reputations and their legacies are on the line at this year's World Cup Finals tournament. The World's best players and coaches who now must prove exactly that. There have been no end of players, over the years, with a wealth of talent that never found the way to etch their name in the annals of football history. Names who will be forgotten by the next generation. For these 10 people, it's now do or die. Time to decide whether, 100 hundred years from now, they'll join the likes of Pele and Maradona in total super-stardom or Hernan Crespo and Kaka, who just never managed to get it done on the grand stage.