England manager Roy Hodgson has admitted that he is still worried about the heat and humidity that they will face in the opening game of their World Cup campaign.
The Three Lions play Italy on June 14, at the Arena Amazonia in Manaus, where the average temperature in the Brazilian summer is above 30C.
Hodgson is visiting the site of the match this week to view the facilities, but it is the climate that is his biggest concern.
"It will be good to go and see the stadium and the training facilities," Hodgson told Sky Sports News. "It was important for me to get a feeling for those sort of things even though the FA have done a lot of work in that respect already before I came out here.
"I think the World Cups are traditionally played in the summer and there have been a lot of very, very hot tournaments that have been played. I remember the one in the summer of 1994 in America - it was absolutely incredible.
"I remember our (Switzerland vs. United States) opening game in the Silverdome indoors in Detroit; the heat and humidity were really quite incredible. So we accept that and we understand that it is going to be hot but the important thing for me was to get some sort of feel for it and we've got to hope we can prepare for those hot weather conditions."
England play Uruguay and Costa Rica in Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte respectively in their other Group D games.
Joe Fish
