Brazil's President Rousseff celebrated on Thursday the success of the FIFA World Cup, which is taking place in 12 Brazilian cities and has so far not featured any major incidents.

In an analogy to last year's protests, in which protesters called for 'FIFA-standard' public services as a way to say that education and healthcare needed a quality boost, President Rousseff said that the World Cup now needs to have a 'Brazil- standard'.

"The Cup is being a source of pride for us, as Brazil and the Brazilian people are showing that we can make, in and out of the soccer field, a World Cup the way it must be done: with a Brazil- standard," she said in a ceremony to launch urban mobility projects in Santos, Sao Paulo state.

She praised the performance of Latin American teams in the competition, which has been very positive so far -- out of the 16 teams qualified to the Cup's knock-out stage, seven are Latin American: Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Colombia, and Argentina.

"I have reached the conclusion that this is a CELAC Cup," she joked, referring to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. "The amount of Latin American teams with good chances in the Cup, good teams, is huge. It is beautiful to see Latin America so strong."

The other teams which qualified for the knock-out state, which starts on Saturday, are the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, Greece, Belgium, United States, Algeria and Nigeria.

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