Football stadiums will cost Brazil $3.47 billion. That’s more than three times the $1.1 billion South Africa spent on stadiums for the 2010 World Cup. Most stadiums are over budget, and some may never be used again. The stadium Manaus ran $67 million over budget. Its local football side is likely to attract less than 5 percent of the stadium’s 42,000 person seating capacity. Outside the stadiums, the costs are almost incalculable. At least $10 million was invested in infrastructure to handle the tourism surge performed more poorly than expected. Of the 13 airports slated for renovations, only two will be ready in time for the World Cup. Meanwhile, Rio de Janeiro announced a hike in public transportation fares, despite massive protests sparked by a similar announcement last year. More protests are planned, with the rallying cry “ If there’s not going to be rights, there’s not going to be a Cup.”
FIFA made Brazil change its laws in order to host the World Cup. Many of Brazil’s federal laws clash with the moneymaking mechanisms of FIFA, the World Cup’s official organizer (based in Switzerland, the “nonprofit organization” operates on a budget of $800 million. According to the Guardian, FIFA’s 23 executives earn an average of $1.2 million per year.) FIFA demanded exemptions from federal laws, culminating in the General Law of the Cup, passed by the Brazilian legislature and signed by the president. The law granted a free pass to FIFA, exempting it from payroll taxes, visa requirements. To appease Budweiser, FIFA’s booze-sponsor, alcohol was allowed in stadiums (it’s normally banned to reduce violence). Brazil’s elected officials didn’t capitulate on every single demand, and the Supreme Court scrutinised the General Law. Still, many citizens felt that FIFA had dictated terms after awarding the cup.
Firms sponsoring the football jamboree will get tax relief worth up to £312m. FIFA insists host nations provide tax relief for sponsors and its own staff. This includes import levies on food and drink or merchandise linked to the tournament, according to accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.That means tax breaks for McDonald’s, Budweiser owner Anheuser-Busch InBev and Johnson & Johnson.
‘The price of these tax breaks for corporate giants will be paid by people living in poverty in Brazil and that is obscene,’ said InspirAction, the Spanish partner of British anti-poverty charity Christian Aid. The money should be used ‘for the benefit of Brazil’s many poor communities, not to enrich the already powerful.’It pointed to a community of the descendants of runaway slaves in the Amazonian state of Para, who have been hit with a £4m land tax bill.
Brazil’s government has embraced laws establishing vaguely defined crimes such as “gang activity” and “terrorism.” Human rights groups fear the laws will be used to suppress the protests that flourished in June 2013; Brazil’s answer to the Arab Spring. According to a press release by Amnesty International: "The rights to freedom of expression and to peaceful assembly are under threat in Brazil....New draconian 'anti-terror' laws currently before parliament signal the government’s intent to crush any peaceful protests in the country."
Brazil has mobilised 157,000 soldiers and police to ensure security during the World Cup. The defense ministry said it would provide 57,000 navy, army and air force personnel for the event, including 21,000 who will be on a state of alert for situations requiring immediate intervention. The ministry has invested 709 million reais ($322 million) since 2012 in modernizing its forces and preparing them for the tournament. Rousseff’s government is ready for urban warfare against the have-nots.
Many ex-players enter politics and number currently serve as legislators on the national and state levels. Rómario, Delei or Marquez. They’re all politicians now. Some soccer players such as Ronaldo are mulling a run in the next elections. Then there’s soccer legend Pelé, who once served as the Minister of Sports. He helped create a law to protect athletes in the workplace. He resigned in 2001. Pelé, is known for plying his trade as a spokesman for many philanthropic causes such as pediatric health and served as a goodwill ambassador for UNESCO. Nevertheless, Pelé is a money-hungry conservative and advocate for Brazil's Big Ag. Arguably history’s greatest attacking midfielder on the soccer pitch, Pelé is a right-winger in the arena of politics. Unlike his colleagues, Pelé never ran for office. He focuses on commercial interests, appearing in ads for Subway sandwiches, shampoo, Viagra...even diamonds made from his own hair. But that hasn’t stopped him from stumping for a conservative agenda. He currently represents the National Agriculture Confederation (CNA), an agri-business lobby. In a 2013 ad campaign, Pelé presented the CNA as patriotic, domestically focused and pro-environment. In reality, CNA was formed to support de-regulation and exports. When Brazil passed a forestry law in 2012 the CNA lobbied hard to give amnesty to loggers who had destroyed protected rainforest. His popularity plunged last year, however, when he took to YouTube to discourage protesters off the streets. His comments showed ignorance of the protester’s concerns — including price hikes on public transport, widespread corruption, healthcare woes and high spending on soccer stadiums — and led to him being mocked on social media and called a traitor. The massive amounts of money poured into football have turned skilled athletes into sporting mercenaries without any loyalties. Players and clubs are financial assets to be sold and bought. It is now a huge business where corruption, greed, and outright criminal behavior run rampant. The once beautiful game is now the most obscene illustration of the most sordid greed.
For many, football is more than a sport. It has almost the status of a religion that is woven into people’s daily life. This World Cup is intended for the country's elite, to boost the nation’s international standing and for affluent tourists to enjoy, at the expense of Brazil's rising indigent and working class segments. Instead of improving urban housing or public transportation, raising the pay of government workers or funding much-needed social projects benefitting the country's rising poor, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff gave a blank check to Sports Minister Adelo Rebelo. FIFA and the Brazilian government want nothing more than to hide these demands of the poor, from the world's gaze. Many are protesting outside of stadiums. They are marching to demand the basic necessities the state has denied them while a $900m stadium in a city with no club team has been built. England’s opening game against Italy next Saturday is in Manaus – a city at the frontier of the Amazon rainforest and where Honda and Samsung have factories. The 40,000-odd stadium does look impressive, but at some $30million over budget, with no full-time tenant planned after the tournament, and in a city where the biggest local team has only 3,000 paying supporters, one wonders how necessary it actually is to have a stadium there. Capital city Brasilla has an even bigger vanity project, with some 70,000 people fitting in the stadium, but no team is actually based with the nation’s purpose-built capital. Protesters are calling for livable wages while the pockets of World Cup profiteers grow fatter. When they were lifted out of poverty, many Brazilians moved on from “quantitative” demands (more jobs, more schools, more hospitals) to “qualitative” ones (better jobs, better schools, better care in hospitals). They feel frustrated, and are expressing their discontent. The catalyst for that anger is the World Cup. Obviously, the protests aren’t against football, but against those shady practices that has become symbolised by the event. Demonstrators are protesting the cost of a sporting spectacle paid at the detriment to the already poorly functioning public services like education, health and public transport.
Less than half a mile from England’s World Cup hotel in the southern suburbs of Rio is the favela of Rochina – one of the largest shanty towns in South America, with over 200,000 inhabitants. Recently, the area has been a place where gun fights between police and locals have been a regular, even nightly, occurrence and police have been accused of militarising locals after attempting to cleanse it for the visiting sports tourists. The England playing squad are almost all millionaires, with Wayne Rooney the highest earner at some £250,000 a week, plus image rights and being the beneficiary of various tax evasion measures. The people in Rochina will be lucky to earn £250,000 in their entire lives, and will almost certainly see no economic benefit from this football roadshow being in their nation. Matuidi, one of France’s world cup players plays for the Qatari-owned PSG, and his annual salary exceeds $16 million. By comparison, France’s average annual income is $41,850. In other words, it would take an average French person 390 years to earn what Matuidi makes kicking a ball around for a year. Yaya Toure earns 14,750 times the average income in the Ivory Coast; Eto’o makes 5,130 times that of Cameroon; Messi 5,000 time the average income in Argentina, Ronaldo 2,370 times the average Portuguese income, and Neymar 1,030 time the average revenue in Brazil.
Workers winning on the streets means far more than Brazil winning on the field.
“But, if it’s not too much to ask, it would great if Brazilians could both help spark a global revolution and, er, let the football matches continue! It would be one way of ensuring the revolution would be televised…” Harry Browne
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