On the World’s Stage
This year’s World Cup is stirring up nationalistic fan pride—and some controversy
In the days leading up to the December draw for the 32 nations entering the initial stage of the 2014 World Cup, to be held in Brazil later this year, talk in the sports pages in Spain was as much about distance between stadiums, temperature and humidity as it was about who the defending champions might face.
So it goes when staging the world’s most-watched sports event in one of the world’s largest countries. Geography itself becomes a key factor in assessing the fortunes of the competitors, divided by world soccer governing body FIFA into eight groups of four.
As the days dwindle to the month-long event, sports fans, businesses and hemisphere-watchers are looking not only at the health and training of their favorite teams and athletes but at a host of factors, from weather and travel considerations to ticket sales, politics and economics. It may seem like minutia to some, but the interplay among them may well determine whether or not this iteration of the games is considered a success.
“On the field, they have a real chance. And that’s the thing everybody’s hoping. If Brazil wins the World Cup, the fact that there’s no airports or roads will be completely forgotten.”
When it comes to travel considerations for the teams, Spain emerged relatively fortunate, with their longest trip between games during the June 12-July 13 tournament being less than 800 miles. Climate changes will be minimal for the Iberian champions, meaning they could focus more on soccer in their quest to become the first nation to win two consecutive World Cups since Brazil in 1958 and 1962.
The United States, on the other hand, was saddled with a frequent-flyer’s schedule, given a tournament-leading total of nearly 9,000 miles between the three games of the opening round, and climates ranging from the steamy rainforest to the chilly northeastern part of the country.
So it is that fans of the U.S. team will have to pay upwards of $1,000 for domestic flights between the three opening round matches alone, on June 16, in the small, northeastern city of Natal; June 22, in the Amazonian city of Manaus; and June 26, when it’s back to the northeast, and Recife.
As for the soccer itself, the U.S. Men’s team is also up against it, as the group of four in which it landed includes Ghana, a team that has beaten the Yanks in 2010 and 2006; Portugal, with its star striker, Cristiano Ronaldo, who won the Ballon d’Or FIFA Player of the Year award in January and was named the seventh most popular athlete among Americans aged 12-24 in the annual ESPN Sports Poll, and Germany, considered by many a favorite to reach the final—and the country of birth for U.S. team coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, setting up a dramatic match in the opening round’s final game.
Still, distances, costs, weather and competition all appear to have left U.S. fans unfazed, and large numbers have purchased tickets to the first World Cup held in this hemisphere since the United States was host in 1994. FIFA announced weeks before the New Year that Americans led the pack among foreigners, purchasing 38,000 tickets to the event. Of course, that number was dwarfed by the number of tickets bought by Brazilians, about 86 percent of nearly 1.2 million sold.
On the pitch, the list of favorites to go far in the month-long tournament includes a handful of Latin American countries. At the top of the list is obviously Brazil, whose home advantage is buoyed by their successful record during the last year under 2002 World Cup champion coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari. This includes ending Spain’s record 29-game unbeaten streak in competitive matches with a 3-0 drubbing in last spring’s Confederations Cup final.
Spanish-speaking nations to watch include Argentina, whose Lionel Messi made history in the ESPN poll by becoming the first foreign athlete to crack the top 10 favorite athlete list among Americans of all ages; Colombia, with an impressive record in the continent’s qualifying contests leading the country to its first World Cup since 1998; Chile, who finished third in South America’s qualifying stage, behind Argentina and Colombia; and Uruguay, whose coach Oscar Tabarez led the team to a fourth-place finish in the 2010 World Cup, after losing 3-2 to none other than Germany.
Beyond the Stadium
Still, in the months leading up to the event—and quite possibly during the tournament itself—attention may well be drawn from sport at least part of the time, as protests that began last year around rising bus fares have expanded in their focus and geographic reach, using the estimated $15 billion price tag of the tournament’s infrastructure as a lightning rod for concerns about the social and economic problems facing many of the large nation’s poor and working class.
During the Confederations Cup, a walk-up to the quadrennial global tournament, tens of thousands of protesters filled the streets surrounding stadiums across Brazil, even getting within 200 yards of the final game at Rio de Janeiro’s fabled Maracana stadium, filled with 70,000 fans. In response, the New Year brought news from the Brazilian government that an elite force of 10,000 anti-riot police would be deployed to the 12 cities hosting the World Cup.
Meanwhile, there is concern about air transport as well. Early January also brought news of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff considering an unusual move to allow foreign airlines to enter the domestic market during the World Cup, a response to reports of price gouging by the country’s two major airlines, Gol and Tam.
“We want all the businesses to get a return for their investment during the major events [Brazil is hosting], but prices must be fair,” said the president’s chief of staff, Gleisi Hoffmann, according to the BBC.
The numerous missed deadlines constitute “an absolute scandal.”
Andrew Downie, Sao Paulo correspondent for Reuters and founder of Kick Off LatAm Sports, a sports communications firm, said the debate within Brazil in the months leading up to the tournament has been over what legacy the event will leave behind. He noted that earlier government promises to spend more on public transportation upgrades than on stadiums appear to be falling short, and that the public is following developments closely. To make matters worse, FIFA President Sepp Blatter said Brazil is further behind in deadlines set for the event than any other host country in the nearly 16 years he has been in office. “It’s an absolute scandal,” Downie says.
Similarly, Christopher Gaffney, an academic in Rio de Janeiro who studies the economic, political and social impacts of the World Cup, notes that “economic forecasts that get into the paper are paid for by the [Brazilian] government,” and use multipliers to predict large indirect economic benefits that have already been disproven in similar large sporting events held elsewhere. The estimated total number of foreign visitors during the tournament, 600,000, makes for an average month in Brazil, he says—and is less than the influx of tourists during the country’s famed Carnaval. “If you only evaluate them in economic terms,” he says, “these events don’t make sense.”
Gaffney, who keeps a blog on progress in preparations for the World Cup and related issues, adds, “there will be protests at all the games—you can guarantee that.”
At the same time, Downie recalls that in countries like Brazil, soccer, or futebol, is the opiate of the masses. “On the field, they have a real chance. And that’s the thing everybody’s hoping. If Brazil wins the World Cup, the fact that there’s no airports or roads will be completely forgotten.” •
This story first appeared in the Feb./Mar. issue of Poder Hispanic Magazine. Check us out @PODERMagazines or at poder360.com.
