The other day as we were watching one of the many news stories about the approaching World Cup, when one of my colleagues advised a flatmate of his was going to watch the tournament in Brazil, staying there with his family. At this point several other co workers started commenting on whether said flatmate would even get to go to any of his games and questioned whether the tournament would even continue. In a way it feels surreal that we are even talking about this, with the tournament being about 2-3 days away. (By the time this blog goes up on the site the first game will be mere hours away). But we know the Stadium in Sao Paulo will not be completed in time for the opening ceremony (at least not to the full 65,000 capacity it was planned for) and a few people who had purchased tickets will not be able to go to the game as said seats did not get built on time.
We are still not sure how many of the 12 scheduled stadiums will be ready come tournament time, but we have been here before with the previous World Cup in South Africa. However the hosts managed to make their 6 month deadline then, and threw a wonderful tournament (vuvuzelas aside), a tournament which I think put on a new showcase for the entire continent (even if the legacy of the tournament in the host country itself is mixed). Before then we also had the 2004 Olympics in Greece, where it was rumoured the stadium was only finished the day before the tournament.This feels very different to the those situations; a lot has been said about how the Brazilians have wasted their time on this (since they effectively knew they would be hosting the tournament in 2003) and the fact that the Brazilian World Cup Committee insisted on 12 cities when FIFA were happy with 8. But even more than all that the various controversies that have arisen in the last year or so, have probably been magnified by other controversies that have engulfed FIFA.
Since the 2010 tournament in South Africa, the 2010s have not been kind to FIFA. The controversies surrounding the next two tournaments are going to be hard to ignore. FIFA’s various decrees to change the laws of Brazil have also not gone down well. For example, the ban on drinking alcohol in stadiums (which had dramatically reduced violence in games) seems more about pleasing sponsors rather than anything to do with the beautiful game itself. It is hard to see how football can be a force for good, as Sepp Blatter keeps saying, with all this going on especially for the people of Brazil right now.
If that were not bad enough, the World Cup has taken the stereotyping of Brazilians to Nth degree. Adidas have pulled two T-shirts which played on the stereotypes of Brazil being full of Football and sexy women.
This was probably not the profile, that Brazilians expected the tournament to give to their great nation. With all this going on, it is not hard to sympathise with Brazilian protesters, who feel that with the eyes of the world squarely on Brazil; this is their time to be heard.
In the modern world, there a very few opportunities for the downtrodden masses, or even just those people who are being treated unfairly by big movers and shakers of society, to find any kind of voice, this is an opportunity that cannot be missed. And it will not be missed.
With all that is going on, I can’t help but think of Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff.
A truly inspirational figure, who despite having a relatively well-off upbringing, gave up the comfortable life to join a Socialist guerrilla front, in attempt to the right the wrongs brought upon her countrymen and women by the brutal military government of the 70s. In her youth she was held captive for 22 days and tortured, before becoming a politician after that regime had been overthrown. Now as Brazil’s first woman President she has to face her own people who are looking for that very same justice that she herself fought so hard for throughout her youth. Today she is instead part of the government that is opposed to the working classes demands, instead, siding with FIFA and their band of major multinational conglomerates who seek to shape her country to their image all in an effort to make more money..
At the end of the day I am sure the tournament will go on with no issues on the football side of things, but I am not sure it will come without a cost. That cost may end up being a greater tragedy for Brazil than the one on 16th July 1950, when the Maracana went silent.
NineSixFourTwo 