Brazil World Cup squad: No alarms and no surprises as Luiz Felipe Scolari names his 23

In the end, despite Luiz Felipe Scolari's coy suggestion the night before, there were no real surprises. No Lucas Leiva, no Kaká, no Robinho, certainly no Ronaldinho.

The announcement of Brazil's World Cup squad drew over 800 journalists to the Vivo Rio conference hall on Wednesday afternoon. There, for once, proceedings got underway on time, the sinister José Maria Marin keeping his introductory speech short before handing over to Brazil's "commander".

Felipão did not waste much time either. After briefly calling on Brazil to "get behind the squad despite their preference for footballer A, B or C", he named the 23 players who will attempt to win the World Cup on home soil this summer. 21 or 22 of which anyone could have guessed beforehand, as the Seleção coach readily admitted.

Read the rest of this piece on the Yahoo! Eurosport website.