On the Subject of Whether or Not Brazil Could Handle the 2014 World Cup

Well, there were plenty of naysayers. They said the stadiums wouldn’t be ready, but for the most part they were. They said the airports wouldn’t be ready, but for the most part they were. The worst airport problems were weather-related. Brazil’s glorified golden team had its embarrassing "senior moment," but by now most Brazilians have gotten over it. Yes, Brazil pulled it off. And Brazil did it the Brazilian way, which means that they did it at the last minute, they were a bit disorganized, but they did it with tons of good humor and warmth and caring and creativity. And style, lots of style. Brazil really showed the world a good time, a better time, I’d wager, than anyone has ever had at a World Cup before.

I’d also wager that nobody, but nobody, thought that the one place Brazil would really shine would be in Law & Order. I’ve written many times that Brazil is world-famous as a country where lawbreaking fugitives can hole up in peace, but that image may well be near to cracking. An impressive number of internationally-wanted criminals were captured during this World Cup, thanks to super cooperation between Brazilian police and Interpol. Let’s see, they arrested an Argentine "Dirty War" torturer and murderer; they arrested a long-sought after Mexican drug trafficker; they arrested a German tax evader who fled to Brazil two years ago; and all of these crooks, and more, now await extradition. Amazing how soccer arouses such passion that the bad guys are willing to risk their freedom to watch a game!

Gang that led to Copacabana Palace, FIFA's HQ

The Brazilian federal police also managed to do what no police force has had the balls to do up to now. They caught an extremely high-level gang, some of whose members have ties to FIFA, which has been selling tickets on the black market for the last four World Cups! FIFA is furious, and not because such high-level people are involved in black marketeering. Oh, no, they’re furious that the Brazilian police have been relentlessly investigating this crime, and are naming names and making arrests! Ironic, isn’t it — so many people thought that Brazil wasn’t ready for the World Cup, when it turned out it was FIFA that wasn’t ready for Brazil.

The great and all-powerful FIFA had little good to say about Brazil’s preparedness before the games started, but ultimately it was FIFA that failed in many of its responsibilities. Stadium security? They blew it in the first week, when groups of Argentine and Chilean fans without tickets crashed stadium barriers. Food service? Non-existent the first week or so of games. And even so, FIFA continued to prohibit fans from bringing their own food to the stadiums. Alcoholic beverage service? FIFA insisted early on that Brazil temporarily suspend its very sound law which prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages in sports stadiums. Then halfway through the games Jérôme Valcke, FIFA’s general secretary, announced that he was shocked, shocked, at the amount of alcohol sold during the games and the level of drunkenness of the fans! Oh, Mr. Valcke, who was going to give whom a kick in the ass a few years ago?

　

Wake me when it's over . . .

And let’s not even mention that opening ceremony — bland, colorless and way below Brazil’s talents and capabilities. It was FIFA that insisted the event be contracted out to a third party, under the aegis of a Belgian choreographer. Nothing at all against Belgium, but — booooooring! Okay, it’s all over, and in the balance I think Brazil (the country, I’m speaking of now, not the team) was a winner. Even so, we can’t seem to stop the infernal countdowns. Get out your calendars! It’s 76 days to the presidential election; 746 days to the 2016 Olympics; and 1,423 days to World Cup 2018!

24 Days to the World Cup

One fine specimen, this Fred . . .

It’s official! The Brazilian 2014 World Cup soccer team has been selected! World Cup fever — always high in Brazil  — is now in overdrive, given that this year it's Brazil that's hosting. It's all World Cup, all the time, on television, on the radio, and splashed in newspaper headlines. But the question begs, at a mere 24 days to opening day, will this super-young, super-cute (if not outright handsome, I mean just look at Fred!) team have any stadiums to play in? Will their hotels be ready? On second thought, forget the Brazilian team, which will be as coddled as a team has ever been. For that matter, forget all the soccer teams, because FIFA has special, hand-picked employees in charge of the players. It’s the fans we should be worrying about. Will visiting fans, both foreign and national, be able to negotiate the airports? Will they find their way around the cities? Will they be okay?



One angry Blatter

FIFA has been badmouthing Brazil for months now, at the same time that they are apparently enjoying the highest profits EVER from a World Cup event. Life is full of such contradictions, right? FIFA’s president, the grumpy (but rich) Joseph Blatter, has harsh criticisms about all the stadium delays (four out of twelve stadiums have still not been completed), and he has gone as far as to blame these delays on the "sluggishness of the Brazilians." He really hit hard on this issue at a recent press conference, particularly since Brazil had — count them — seven years to prepare. Okay, hard not to concede his point. Blatter also criticized the lack of safety for the workers at the various stadium construction sites, and made sure to relieve FIFA of any responsibility for the ten deaths that have occurred. (By the way, have we heard one word, one whisper of a possible criticism on FIFA’s part about the 1,200 workers that have already died while building stadiums in Qatar for the 2022 World Cup?)

So where are we? We’ve got FIFA withholding 7% of ticket sales because they have no idea if the seats they’d like to sell will actually exist. (Installation, or rather, non-installation of seats seems to be the abiding problem at the four incomplete stadiums.) We’ve got FIFA unable to conduct the usual and necessary tests of lights, cables, communication setups, Internet, security preparations, food services, bathrooms — in short, everything that has to be tested before opening to the public. FIFA is livid. Want to move on to airports? We’ve got some beautiful new terminals, but if you peek behind the curtains you see roofs that leak, air conditioning not yet working, unfinished parking garages, no lobby seating areas (what is it with Brazil and seating?) . . .

One of Brazil’s most respected and award-winning journalists, Míriam Leitão, wrote a scathing article in last Sunday’s Globo. She wrote that a country should be going after two wins when hosting a World Cup, the game championship itself and the unparalleled opportunity of being a showcase to the world. Míriam gave sharp and well-reasoned opinions as to why she thinks Brazil has already lost its showcase opportunity, and is now merely "patching up its damaged image." The best Brazil can hope for now, she continued, is the actual World Cup trophy. That was one depressing article. But who knows? Maybe Brazil will actually pull it off. Just a few more days and the whole world will have the answer.

No stadium seating? There's plenty in the lakes!

And even though Brazil has not yet f@#&ed up the 2014 World Cup, people are already writing off the 2016 Summer Olympics as a terrible disaster. Rio de Janeiro is waaaay behind in its preparations. Just as one example, one of the solemn promises Rio made to the Olympic Committee was that it would clean up the lakes in Barra da Tijuca and Jacarepagua (where most of the Olympic events will take place). But these projects haven’t even begun. We’re 806 days out, and word is that even if they were to begin working today they wouldn’t be finished until after the Olympics. Here we go again.

94 Days to the World Cup

Back in January, when questioned as to Brazil’s preparedness for the 2014 World Cup, FIFA President Sepp Blatter said that Brazil is "the country which is the furthest behind since I’ve been at FIFA and moreover, it’s the only one that had so much time — seven years — to prepare itself." Ouch. Well, as of today there are 94 days before the World Cup kicks off. I’ve been defending Brazil all along, but now I’m worried, too. Let’s look at the scoreboard:

Stadiums

OK, now, just a few more seats

Stadiums are the sorest of the sore points. Across the board they have been plagued with construction delays, rising costs, and accidents. Of the 12 stadiums promised, three are still struggling to finish in time, and are not expected to be ready until May 15, less than one month before the opening match. FIFA is beyond upset. You see, once the World Cup starts it’s FIFA that is totally responsible for all the stadium operations. Normally they have time to test everything, like the bathrooms, the security setups, transportation, volunteers, food, credentials and medical support. But they are seriously running out of testing time.

Airports
An internal Brazilian government report concluded that the World Cup will result in some of the longest flight delays Brazil has ever seen. And they came to this conclusion TWO YEARS ago! The airports are the first contact most visitors will have with Brazil, but very little has been done to improve anything in the airports, from parking lots to waiting areas to air conditioning. The various airport projects promised to FIFA sit on top of a pile of broken promises. Work that was expected to be done in 7 of the 9 airports that are run by public authorities will not be completed before the start of the World Cup. For shame.

Public transportation

After all, it does say "Draft Only"

Oh, how the Brazilians hoped and prayed that the various urban transportation projects would improve their lives long after the roar of the World Cup fans faded. But all they see — day in, day out — is the same shoddy infrastructure they’ve always known. Only 5 out of 41 of the promised urban mobility projects have been delivered. Of the rest, some won’t be finished in time, and some haven’t even started. More broken promises. More shame.

Internet
FIFA is furious that it won’t have the normal 90 days it needs to equip the stadiums with IT wiring for the Internet and mobile phones. The IT standards for international broadcasts have a pretty high bar. FIFA will have to begin installing now, while some stadiums are still under construction and the cement isn’t even dry.

Fan fests


It's already over in Recife 

It seems that many of the host cities have found themselves unable to provide the outdoor areas, complete with huge viewing screens, that were required by FIFA. That leaves FIFA with no choice but to file a slew of breach-of-contract lawsuits. And that doesn’t even begin to address the worries that many cities have that these fan fests, if they come off at all, might become the settings for protests and/or vandalism. Which leads me to:

Social unrest
Here’s more recipe for disaster: growing public anger over massive government spending, which has resulted in more and more street protests; escalating violence, with gangs and vandals piggy-backing on the legitimate protests; and strikes, lots of strikes, both real (like the sanitation workers in Rio, during Carnaval no less, and still ongoing) and threatened (Rio police have threatened a World Cup strike). Not the Brazil people want to share with guests to their country and viewers around the world.

Last week in Globo online, the question for readers was: "How do you feel about the World Cup organization, three months before the event is to start?" Here’s how the voting went:

54% — Shame for the state of the airports and the constant delays.
26% — Optimism. There are problems now, but it will all work out in the end.
18% — Don’t care a fig for the World Cup.
2% — Preoccupied with the pace of construction.

But . . . it has been decreed that every day that the Brazilian team plays in the World Cup will be a national holiday. Gotta look at the bright side.

World Cup 2014

It's very likely that few people outside of Brazil are following, or even care much about, the details of the recent dust-up between the Brazilian government and FIFA (the International Federation of Association Football), but we're following it and it's not pretty. As the country chosen to host the next World Cup of soccer in 2014, Brazil has enjoyed a substantial boost to its self-image and expects to enjoy an even more substantial boost to its economy. But relations between Brazil and FIFA have been tense for some time now, and are worsening by the day. We're in the middle of a schoolyard fight with no adult supervisors in sight.

Just last week FIFA's general secretary, Jérôme Valcke, complained that Brazil needed to — in his original French words — "se donner un coup de pied aux fesses," or give itself a kick in the ass, to speed up the pace of its World Cup preparations. One could understand that as just a friendly "egging on" to urge Brazil to get those stadiums, hotels and airports built in time. But by the time the statement crossed the Atlantic, it had taken a turn. Brazil, it was said in Portuguese, needed to "levar um pontapé no traseiro," or get a kick in the ass. Gone was the reflexive, "give itself." Now Brazil needed to "get" a kick from some outside party to set it straight. An unfortunate translation.

Valcke believes he said this

Brazil believes he said this

Beer and soccer, a FIFA dream

But I'm not defending FIFA here, because however the statement was translated, the truth is that it had very little to do with whether or not Brazil is behind schedule. FIFA's own report last January congratulated Brazil for being within schedule. So what's going on? It's all about money. Big money. Huge profits. Greed. It has to do with the approval by the Brazilian Congress of something called the Lei Geral da Copa (the General World Cup Law). In one corner stands Brazil, a sovereign nation, with a federal law that prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages in sports stadiums.  Brazil thinks that's a good law, and they want to keep it that way. In the opposing corner stands a big, powerful FIFA sponsor: Budweiser, the King of Beers. They want the law changed. Jérôme Valcke's job is to see that the Lei Geral da Copa is passed, releasing the sale of  beer, thereby insuring FIFA's continued profits.

Valcke commemorating. "Caipirinha anyone? 

Over the last six months the approval of this law met with strong resistance. Voting on it has been delayed several times. As of this writing, it does look as if it will squeak through the Brazilian Congress, with Brazil caving in to the beer interests. As for another Brazilian law in FIFA's greedy sights, that of half-price tickets for people over 60 years of age (which FIFA doesn't want) it looks as if Brazil will hold firm. I think it's all very unfortunate. Drunken drivers leaving a stadium after a game are infinitely more dangerous to the public than a few indignant old codgers.