World Cup Football 2014 Mascot : Fuleco

Mascot refers to the design representing a characteristic feature of the host nation. Since 1966, each FIFA World Cup has its own mascot and the beginning of it was “World Cup Willie”, a distinctive symbol of the United Kingdom (hosted in England). And after every span of 4 years different mascot was designed to represent their respective country. And immediately coming in this year (2014), Brazilians selected the name “Fuleco” for the 3 banded armadillo mascot for the coming World Cup.

It is yet said that it carried over three months and more than 1.7 million people in Brazil to select the public figure of the mascot. Despite this, the Brazilian people were not satisfied with the names picked for public voting and said that organizers must have allowed public to prefer other names.

The name Fuleco is taken from the Portuguese words “Futebol” (football) and “ecologia” (environmental science). This is induced so to encourage the masses to act in an environmentally friendly manner.

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Fuleco is a cartoon adaptation of a puppet. It stands for a cartoon character inspired by a creature on T-shirts and other merchandise. And these three banded armadillos live mainly in the arid north-eastern caatinga region of Brazil, which was thought by biologist Rodrigo Castro, two years ago, that it would get a perfect FIFA World Cup 2014 mascot.

The main objective of this project

The master aim of it was to use it as a platform to put across the importance of environment and environmental science. And I think it has succeeded in doing so.  And it still aims at protecting the habitat and educating the masses close to the danger of quenching of these armadillo. And if they pass on hunting, then it could contribute to the extinguishing of the three banded armadillo within 50 years.