Brazilians versus the World Cup 2014

The FIFA World Cup, the international football tournament, will take place in Brazil this June. Denise Frizzo explains why many of her fellow Brazilians oppose the event.

There are many reasons to believe Brazil is the best country to host a World Cup, such as its historical success in the game and the worldwide known passion Brazilians have for football. It is true that the sport is ingrained in people’s lives from childhood, with families getting together to watch local and national competitions and people scheduling their agenda according to the games. Kids are taught to support their parents’ team and boys dream to be famous football players.

Such attitudes reinforce the slogan “Brazil is the country of football”. I include myself in this culture as I, like most Brazilians, know the football rules and – although I’ve been living overseas for a long time – still try to keep on top of how my team is going and when Brazil will play next.

Besides, Brazil is a beautiful country with many places worthwhile visiting and is rich in culture and history. Moreover, it is a peaceful country that keeps good diplomatic relations internationally and is therefore becoming a safe region for tourists.

This picture is not distorted at all, and I could not disagree with any of these statements. However, there is much hidden under a huge red carpet, covering 200 billion Brazilians, a lot of them actively opposing or simply disagreeing with the World Cup 2014.

What makes Brazilians opposing the World Cup is more about how the government is investing into it than being against the event itself. Everyone likes football, but many find it difficult to see millions of dollars – from public and private sources – being put into stadiums and other overpriced projects while the population is forced to face bad conditions in services every day.

Moreover, low income in most areas remains a contentious issue. As a result, teachers, public transport workers, health workers and postmen go on strike as the only way to achieve a small salary increase. And this happens year after year. In 2013 protesters motivated by this perceived uneven environment decided to take to the streets in unexpected numbers: millions participated in many cities in Brazil and overseas. After a few weeks, violence was used by police and small groups of protesters, which changed the focus of protests. Traditional and conservative media, which have a major influence in Brazil, are also accused of being responsible in bringing the dialogue started during the protests to a standstill.

These discussions about services in general extend to the World Cup, as those same systems of transport, communication and health will be the only ones available to thousands of tourists expected in June and July. Since Brazil was announced the host of the World Cup in 2007, Brazilians and local media are wondering how they could possibly cope with the event, with Brazil already having so many issues regarding infrastructure.

Language is also a problem because most people cannot speak other languages other than Portuguese. This includes taxi drivers, waiters, hotel staff and other workers who will find themselves having to communicate with foreign people. After more than six years, nothing has changed much to improve the infrastructure in the twelve cities that will host the World Cup.

The twelve stadiums are also a reason for protest among the population. Even though Brazil has football fans all around the country, the major teams are concentrated in a few states in the Southeast and South such as Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. In the last national competition in 2013 for instance there were five teams from Sao Paulo and four from Rio. It is common that someone from Amazon, where there are no traditional teams, supports Flamengo or Corinthians, popular teams from other states. Nevertheless, a stadium has been built in Amazon for the World Cup as well as in Pantanal and in the Capital Brasilia. These three regions don’t have enough supporters in their local competitions to fill a tenth of the new stadiums’ capacity, which will probably make them useless after the one-month event.

What if less than half the money invested in new stadiums were used to renovate existing stadiums to suit FIFA requirements? The Brazilian Government alleges that having matches in areas that are of touristic interest, but not popular for football-supporters, would attract more people to different places around our big country. However, protesters reply, the amount of money invested on it would pay airfare for thousands of tourists to have them visiting Amazon and Pantanal for free.

Brazil has a disturbing historic of corruption in governments involving great amount of money. Usually, frauds made by politicians and millionaire entrepreneurs make chains of “favours” exchanged, benefitting political parties and companies through illegal partnerships. As the World Cup involves not only governments and enterprises, but also national and international institutions such as the Brazilian Confederation of Football (CBF) and FIFA, suspicions of corruption increase.

The general mistrust in the football sector in Brazil is mainly centred around scandals involving the ex-president of CBF, Ricardo Teixeira, who renounced in 2012 when several frauds came to light. He had the support of Joao Havelange, his father-in-law and FIFA’s President from 1974 to 1998, to become CBF’s President in 1989. Both of them were suspected of frauds.

Although Brazilians understand there is corruption in many countries, the feeling of injustice is probably what leads them to revolt. There are millions of families with precarious living conditions barely surviving. The minimum wage is, converted to Australian Dollars, less than $400 per month – and a lot of workers earn no more than this. At the same time, around ten per cent of the whole population earn hundred times more. The salary of Senators, for instance, is $13,000 per month plus benefits.

Apart from these internal issues, Brazil is a wonderful country, well-known for its happy and welcoming people. I particularly do not believe this bad environment can affect tourists – it is clearly a protest against what has been done for years and the presence of fans has nothing to do with that.

The World Cup will take place in four months. Will Brazil run the event properly? We will see. I do not discourage anyone who wishes to go to the World Cup this year. On the contrary, I think it is a great opportunity to be in the ‘country of football’. I am merely aiming to contribute some knowledge about structural problems that sometimes are not available in international media.