The Politics of the 2014 World Cup Just Got Started
Bruno Romani | Jun 04, 2009 | Comments 0
The 2014 World Cup is 5 years ahead of us. Long time? Not for the politics going on in the background. Before I even go ahead, bare in mind a few things:
Brazil hosted the 2007 Pan-american games in Rio. The proposed budget for the hosting the games: R$ 400 million ( at a rate of US$ 1 = R$ 2.05 today that makes it US$ 195 million). The final cost was R$ 3,5 billion. And here we don’t even need to convert anything. The final cost was almost 10 times more than the proposed budget. All in public money. Social programs and many other things in real need for this money were ignored. The worst of all this: the Brazilian Accountability Office,known as TCU, has not produced yet a final report on the topic.
If a second class competition produced this insane spending, which is very popular in Brazilian politics, imagine the impact of a World Cup. The Brazilian project will, in almost its entirety, be financed by public money. See where I’m trying to get, right?
On top of this, Ricardo Teixeira, the man ahead of CBF, does not have a clean sheet. More than 20 years in power, personal wealth increased by many zeroes, shady contracts. The man has everything. Now put together politicians hungry for public money and a man who wants to keep its power and money. Here we have the basic scenario of the 2014 World Cup.
When FIFA announced the 12 cities, it wasn’t a decision of the entity, although they could have had a word on that. As Juca Kfouri, and many other serious Brazilian journalists have been showing in the past few days, Ricardo Teixeira was the one who chose the cities. Some choices were obvious (and would’ve been done anyway), but a few things come to the attention. Teixeira has not announced yet the cities of the final and the opening game. He said that these details will be announced only after the 2010 World Cup. The reason? Teixeira will have another year of peace with politicians kissing his ass to bring such important events to their cities. And this is not to mention cities that will try to get the national sqauds to practice and other minor things like that.
And why wait until after the 2010 World Cup? Because few months after that, Brazil will hold general elections for president, governors and congressmen. And Teixeira wants to make sure he is in good terms with whoever gets elected. Right now, the rumors say Teixeira is not decided about the opening game. He is between Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte. The reason? The governors of both states (Jose Serra and Aecio Neves) belong to the same party (PSDB) and the two are the favorites for the party to run for the presidency. Teixeira is likely to give that opening game to the state whose governor looks better.
Now, in the past few days, a few articles have thrown in the Brazilian media criticizing the Morumbi, the stadium introduced by the city of Sao Paulo as part of its plan for the World Cup. Some of the articles said that FIFA sees the project of the stadium as the worst of all. As many problems as the stadium, built in the 60′s, has, Ricardo Teixeira already has the perfect excuse to take from the city of Sao Paulo the opening game.
However, there’s another detail: Morumbi is the stadium of Sao Paulo FC, and the club already announced it won’t use any public money for the World Cup project. If Sao Paulo does not use public money, chances for those expecting to pocket some of the people’s money are smaller. The rumors that go in the background is that there’s a strong movement to exclude Morumbi from the cup so that a brand new arena is built with public money. And after the cup, that stadium would land on the hands of the only club that does not have a stadium in the city: Corinthians. Another important point: the brother of the president of Corinthians worked for the accounting office of PT (the worker’s party) for 16 years. PT is the party of President Lula.
So watch out for this cup. It is not only about fun. Specially when foreigners are not allowed to have this information. In Brazil, there’s going to be a lot revolving around politics, money and power. We will follow closely.
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