BRAZIL BEAT: Match day finally here at World Cup

Soccer fans from Belgium pose for a photo with a replica of a World Cup trophy on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, June 11, 2014. The World Cup soccer tournament starts Thursday.

More than five hours before the World Cup kicked off, hundreds of fans were already lining up outside the Fan Fest space on Rio's Copacabana beach.
The line of mostly yellow and green, the colors of the Brazilian flag, snaked up the white sands of Copacabana midday Thursday before making a U-turn onto the beach's iconic black and white stone mosaic sidewalk.
Host Brazil faces Croatia in Sao Paulo to open the World Cup at 5 p.m. local time.
In Rio, soldiers armed with automatic weapons patrolled the beach, not far from vendors hawking Brazil jerseys, noisemakers and green and yellow Afro wigs that were doing a brisk business.