Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Prison Football

The new 44,000-seat stadium in Manaus, being built at a cost of $275 million, will host only four 2014 World Cup matches. The city of 2.3 million has no team in Brazil’s first or second division, and little soccer tradition. The potential for building white elephants is similar for three other new stadiums: in the capital Brasilia, in Cuiaba in the southwest, and in Natal in the northeast.

FIFA requires only eight stadiums for the World Cup, but Brazil decided to have 12 — under pressure from politicians who used the construction projects to provide jobs and political loyalty.

Brazilian Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo has defended the legacy of the stadiums as “centers for sports and non-sports events” and has suggested they would be places for conventions, shows and fairs. Jose Maria Marin, the president of the Brazilian Football Federation, said earlier this year that finding uses for some stadiums after the World Cup will “all depend on the creativity, the imagination of the owners and the operators of these stadiums. It will depend on the imagination of each leader.”

Alvaro Corado, spokesman for the Amazonas state court system, told The Associated Press that Judge Sabino Marques had proposed a novel idea. “He would, perhaps, suggest to the government of the state of Amazonas that the stadium be used as a processing center for prisoners after the World Cup,” Corado said

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