The real world cup

In this issue…

The sun, the crowds, the salsa football, Copacabana beach, Brazil as world champions… As eyes turn to the competition kicking off next week, we focus on the other World Cup, the Homeless World Cup. We have a picture special that tells the stories of some incredible teams and locations, Brazil amongst them, and look at where it goes next.

More great writing this week:

• Jonathan Meades doesn’t write often or for many people. Like a lugubrious but subversive Betjeman, his (far too infrequent) TV shows take apart the world as we see it to reveal what is really there. And he’s very funny. He has written a piece for The Big Issue this week. Yes he has. It’s about football and greed, but it’s a little more than that. You won’t read it anywhere else.
• Our Letter To My Younger Self is with Colin Jackson. Though he looks like an even-tempered happy sports commentator, he reveals details of crippling anxiety attacks as his athletics career drew to a close, an obsession with detail, an eating disorder, and a row with Linford Christie that almost lead to the torching of an office.
• There has been some coverage over the last couple of days over things IDS may or may not have said about Big Issue vendors and benefits. John Bird simply, and clinically, gets to the heart of the debate.
• Steve Peters is the best-selling psychologist credited with making winners of Bradley Wiggins and Ronnie O’Sullivan (almost with Liverpool). He has been taken to Brazil by Roy Hodgson to get the England heads right. We talk to him about his secrets – and we detail the other 12th men the other nations are calling on. The Pope and Pokemon feature.
• Next week is National Carers Week. In our My Week section, Becky Hammerton, an 18-year-old from Dorset who is a carer for both parents, tells her story. She has been a carer for them right through her childhood. Stoic, strong and quite incredible she only gets two days a term when she can take a break away and be a kid. That doesn’t feel right.

Our featured vendor telling their story in My Pitch is Peter Cowles, working in Darlington. At the heart of his local community, he’s a man who is looking up and feeling positive.

Also, Sam Delaney has another missive from the heart of darkness. And we bring you the toughest suduko in magazines.