WORLD CUP
BRAZIL | JUNE 12 - JULY 13, 2014
BURDEN OF HOPES
Big psychological home advantage is one of the Brazilians’ weapons
LIKE sunshine and happiness or Lennon and McCartney, football and
Brazil go together, each making the other better. So the first World Cup in
Brazil in 64 years is bound to be special.
Having cracked open a new continent four years ago in South Africa,
the planet’s most popular sport now returns to its spiritual home, the
country which more than any other has put the wow factor into football.
Football and Brazil will both win if the four-week feast of 64
matches fulfills expectations for a samba-fuelled carnival of goals and fun,
a showcase for the game’s stars to prove their worth or see their thunder stolen by
exciting new talents.
But South America’s largest country and the sport that many of its 200 million
people treat as a quasi-religion will emerge as losers with damaged reputations if the
20th World Cup goes wrong, which it could.
WILL THERE
BE SAMBA?
MAN TO WATCH
All eyes will be on
the gutsy Neymar
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t h e g a m e sports magazine
Brazil squandered too much precious time in the seven years it was given to
prepare. Construction deadlines were repeatedly missed. Many promised transport
improvements were scrapped or will not be ready for the June-July influx of fans from
around the world. The runaway $3.5 billion spending (triple Brazil’s initial estimates)
on 12 stadiums (four more than World Cup organizer FIFA actually needed) infuriated
Brazilians.
At the year-to-go mark, during the Confederations Cup tune-up tournament last
June, hundreds of thousands of them poured in protest into city streets across the vast
country, asking why hospitals, schools and other essential services aren’t as good as
the newly built or renovated World Cup arenas.
The pop and hiss of police tear-gas canisters, workers plunging to their deaths
at World Cup construction sites, tangles of red tape and other problems during the
preparations haven’t been great advertising for the idea of a dynamic and capable
Brazil, one of the so-called “BRIC” powerhouse economies of tomorrow, along with
Russia, India and China. 8