With
the 2014 World Cup around the corner, host country is Brazil is far behind
schedule. Brazil is behind in the creation of all infrastructures for the
event, and also FIFA is not seeing eye to eye with the Brazilian government. It
took over 2 years for the Brazilian Congress to pass a law that will allow
students and senior citizens to purchase event tickets at a discounted rate.
FIFA’s secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, publicly said Brazil needed a
"kick up the backside", as a way to speed up procedures in Brazil. He
also quietly made publicly aware that there is a clause in the contract to host
the World Cup which allows FIFA to withdraw the event at any point up through
July of this year.
There have
been accusations of the Brazilian government questioning the use, and possible embezzlement,
of the 10 billion Euro of public money made available for the preparation of
the World Cup. All of these allegations would be less severe if the national
team of Brazil was in championship state. Looking forward, Brazil is not
expected to have a team that will compete the way Brazil has for years. Brazil
has 5 World Cup titles, which is the most in the world with the most recent title
coming in 2002 in Korea/Japan. Brazil has 10 top 4 finishes, which is second in
the world behind Germany (12).
A newspaper based out of Brazil expressed criticism when the
World Cup was assigned to Brazil back in October of 2007. In the O Globo was written, “"The Cup is
ours. Now we only need airports, roads, hotels …".
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