LOS ANGELES, USA (AFP) — Supporters of an American who hoped to dribble a soccer ball all the way to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup are mourning his death in a road accident in Oregon just days after he began his odyssey.

Richard Swanson, 42, set off from Seattle, Washington on May 1 with little more than a backpack and a blue ball from the One World Futbol Project, a charity that donates non-destructible footballs to young people worldwide.

Police in Lincoln City, Oregon say he was hit by a pickup truck Tuesday on the southbound shoulder of Highway 101, the Oregon Coastal Highway that runs parallel and close to the Pacific shore.

“There is no indication that he was dribbling the ball at the time of the accident,” the local News Guard newspaper said yesterday on its website, adding that the ball was found nearby.

No one has been charged and the driver is co-operating with police, the News Guard added.

“It is with a heavy heart to notify you that Richard Swanson passed on this morning,” said a post late Tuesday on Swanson’s “Breakaway Brazil” Facebook page signed simply “Team Richard”.

“His team, family, friends, and loved ones will miss him and love him dearly,” it added. “You made it to Brazil in our hearts, Richard.”

Swanson, a keen runner, soccer player and father of two sons, planned to spend more than a year walking and dribbling his One World Futbol to Sao Paulo in time for the World Cup that kicks off June 12 next year.

“It will be a trip of a lifetime where I will push myself further then I ever thought possible,” he wrote on BreakawayBrazil.com, a website in which he chronicled his project.

His 10,000-mile (16,000- kilometre) journey was to have taken him along the US Pacific coast into Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia before reaching Brazil.