By 4pm, Brazil's training session at the Kickers Offenback stadium, ten minutes outside Frankfurt, is a 25,000 sell-out - all tickets having been given away on Tuesday. The place is teeming with festive spirit more reminiscent of the opening day of Glastonbury than a light run around for Ronaldinho and the boys.
All sides of the ground are filled with yellow, including the terracing behind one goal where the green flag of Brazil is popular, and the PA offers a mix of samba drums, 1990s handbag house, and Tony Christie's Amarillo. A scheduled mix-zone, where players can stop and offer the media some words, has been cancelled. It has been organised next to the pitch and so will be too noisy for the team to be heard.
On the taxi ride from the train station there was little clue that Offenbach is aware of the impending World Cup. It is the same in Cologne, although more fans appeared today and it began to finally feel, having arrived on Tuesday, that the 2006 tournament is about to start. A German journalist from a Berlin paper joked that this was because "nobody has given the order yet. Everybody in Germany always waits to be told."
Then he asked if England would attract a similar crowd for a training session. If the World Cup was being played in England, the answer would have to be yes. As I sign off, the Brazil coach has arrived with the players and parked on the pitch. There are frenzied screams. Ronaldinho has just waved.
