About 13,500 miles and more than £6,000. That is the daunting itinerary that awaits the English fan if Friday's World Cup draw installs the national team in the most geographically taxing berth on the Brazil 2014 schedule.
It begins with a game in the north-east on 13 June, requires thousands of miles of travel even in the group stage and then, if the team survive that marathon, obliges them to trek up and down the country via the heart of the Amazon, to the south-western resort of Rio de Janeiro, where the final will be held on 13 July.
This slot, known only as A4, is likely to be filled by the first team to be pulled out of the last pot, where England will probably find themselves. Roy Hodgson has already said this is the draw he wants to avoid because it will involve a game in Manaus, where the humid climate will prove a tougher opponent than any rival team.
Fans may well feel the same once they calculate the miles and dollars needed to travel from opening game to final in this most logistically challenging of World Cups.
Breaking with tradition, Brazil has made things unusually complicated and expensive by arranging the three group games in different cities. This would be challenging in any host nation, but in the world's fifth biggest country, it will mean staggering journey times and costs.
Fans of the team in the A4 slot travelling from Europe are going to have to think big. Very big. If they were to follow their team for all seven games to the final (admittedly a highly unlikely prospect in England's case), they will have to spend more than £6,000 and fly more than 13,300 miles – the equivalent of 75 trips between London and Manchester.
That is the relatively low-budget estimate for economy class flights, two-star (or cheaper) accommodation, the cheapest match tickets and a modest daily food and booze allowance of £18 for the month-long tournament, based on prices quoted online in the past week for travel and accommodation in the six cities, one of which is visited twice.
There are better and worse scenarios. Distances between games in most other groups are shorter. In some cases, long-distance buses may even be an alternative way to take in more of the country at a cheaper price. If England fails to advance to the knock-out stage, the price is halved.
But if you want more comfortable lodging or to leave your flight booking until nearer the time, the costs could surge. In the past week alone, the minimum London to Rio return, leaving Heathrow on 10 June next year, has gone up by more than 70% to £1,300.
The biggest single outlay, of course, is the 6,200-mile-plus round trip from Europe to Brazil. You could cut down the cost and travel time by flying via Portugal to Natal, in Brazil's far north-east tip, but many fans are likely to want their first stop to be Rio – England's base camp and one of the most famous resorts in the world.
Brazil's party capital Rio is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
After the 11-hour journey there, they'll want at least a couple of days to take the edge off the jet lag by sun-worshipping on an Ipanema beach or sipping caipirinhas in São Conrado, where the England team will stay before the tournament begins.
Fans will also need to acclimatise to sky-high prices because Brazil's party capital is one of the country's – and the world's – most expensive cities. The £180 estimate for a two-night stay in Rio is based on a private room for two in a hostel. A sex motel or a favela lodge would be cheaper, but anyone who wants starred accommodation in the famous Copacabana beach district should expect to pay two or three times more.
Fortified by the Atlantic sea breezes, you then fly three-and-a-half hours and 1,295 miles for A4's opening match in Natal. While the footballers labour in the tropical heat, fans will be able to enjoy some of Brazil's most magnificent beaches, buggy rides across the dunes and nightlife that is reputed to be the country's wildest.
The Arena das Dunas stadium in Natal. Photograph: Caninde Soares/AP
After five nights in Natal and a thumping win for team A4 at the Arena das Dunas, which, as the name suggests, looks like something out of the science-fiction film Dune, our dedicated fan then takes the 1,700-mile, six-and-a-half hour flight (with two transfers) to the city in the middle of the Amazon, Manaus. This is hardly a hotbed of football culture – the biggest local team, Nacional is lucky to draw 3,000 supporters, but who cares when you can while away the days until game two with boat rides down the world's greatest river and swims with pink dolphins? Almost everything here has to be shipped from thousands of miles away so to save money on accommodation, our fan is bedding down in a shared room at a hostel.
Fans may want to soak up the sun on Praia da Lua beach in Manaus. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Another victory and then it is time to move on to Brasilia, a mere 1,210 miles distant and four hours away by air, for the final group match. Brazil's modernist capital is what the future was supposed to look like back in the 1950s, when it was planned by Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa. Their architecture is still an impressive sight, but the best views are outside the city, where you can find some of the finest hiking trails in Brazil. Camping might help to reduce the accommodation budget, which is estimated here at almost £530 for five nights at a two-star hotel.
The stay is worth every penny for our fans because A4 have won again to storm through to the last 16 as group winners. That means the next game is a relatively short – 382-mile – hop away to Brazil's third-largest city, Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state.
No shortage of things to do in this buzzing urban centre of art nouveau buildings and environs, which include the fabulous Inhotim institute of contemporary art and botanical gardens. The positive vibe gets even stronger when A4 triumph again and move into the quarter finals.
Worth every penny? The England team. Photograph: Efrem Lukatsky/AP
That means a flight of 1,160 miles back up to the north east. But what's another three hours on a plane – and the associated economic cost and carbon footprint – when a fan can see their team play in a quarter final in Fortaleza?
This former Dutch colony is another of Brazil's beach-and-party capitals and is notorious for its sex industry. The capital of Ceará, one of the poorest states, it's also relatively cheap. Accommodation at a one-star hotel here is just £40 a night.
By now though, all thoughts of economic rationality are out of the window. A4 have clinched a place in the semi-final. What sort of supporter would abandon the team at this stage?
Fans may have to quit their jobs and take out a loan to make the journey back down to Belo Horizonte for this big game. But in our fictional scenario it is worth every penny. A4's unfancied heroes win in extra time to secure a place in the final against Brazil at Rio's Maracanã stadium.
Watching the final in this most hallowed venue will cost at least £269 for the cheapest match ticket, and about the same price for each night in a two-star hotel in Rio.
After more than 36 hours in planes and almost 10,000 miles of travel to this point, fans will need all the beach time they can get to recharge their batteries before the match they plan to tell their grandchildren about.
On the morning of 13 July, our fan spends the last of their cash on a ticket up to the Christ the Redeemer statue, where they secretly pray for an A4 victory – and then a final beer outside the stadium before kick-off. Two hours later, A4's plucky heroes lose on penalties. All our fan has left from this World Cup to end all World Cups are chewed finger nails and a neatly printed credit card bill waiting for them when they get home.
Was it worth it? The 11-hour return journey to Europe allows more than enough time to think up other ways to spend £6,000 and to reflect on how unaffordable the tournament must seem to Brazilians on the average wage of 1,911 reals (£492) a month.
And then, there are the plans for the next World Cup in Russia – an even bigger country – in 2018. Additional research by Anna Kaiser
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