Brazil gives warm-up cold shoulder
Fans fail to get into the swing of things as government desperately hopes feel-good factor will spark during tournament.
“Brazilians have been waiting to have the World Cup here for more than a lifetime, but now nobody’s in the mood,” says one of the few football fans who have come to a central bar in Lapa, Rio de Janeiro, to watch the national team’s final warm up match for the tournament.
Paulo, 51, is here with his girlfriend Angela to see Brazil take on Serbia in Sao Paulo on one of the bar’s screens, which earlier in the day had shown pictures of police clashing with metro workers in that same city.
The busy lunchtime crowd that watched those images has now dispersed, and just a handful of people are here to see the Seleção, the national team, prepare for the biggest month of their careers with a 1-0 victory.
The second-half winner from Fred barely raises a cheer among fans preoccupied with the real-life problems besetting Brazil, with the protests that marked last-year’s Confederations Cup set to recommence at FIFA’s showpiece event.
As Lapa gears up for a lively Friday night’s dancing, a woman in a Brazil shirt stops at one of the bar’s outside tables to beg for change from two other women watching the game. Her efforts are unsuccessful.
Fears over tournament failure
“If Brazil don’t reach the final, there’s going to be chaos,” says waiter Adriano, 31, who went to school with Brazil striker Hulk in Campina Grande, a 2,300km bus ride northwest of Rio.
“People have seen the money the government has spent on the World Cup and wonder why it hasn’t been spent on hospitals and schools.
“Brazilians are not as excited as they were about other World Cups, but once the games start we expect this place to be full.”
Adriano looks to the screen, shaking his head at what he sees as the Serbians’ deliberate attempts to injure Hulk and his strike partner, Neymar.
“Ohh … don’t hurt Neymar,” cries Angela at the next table. It’s a sentiment that may have been expressed by another lady simultaneously a thousand or so kilometres northwest, at the presidential home in Brasilia.
The night before, president Dilma Rousseff had mounted a defence of her handling of the World Cup as she hosted 12 foreign journalists for dinner.
But keeping Neymar’s goal-scoring limbs in full working order could be crucial in deciding whether she has a chance to build a legacy beyond 2014.
The 66-year-old, imprisoned and tortured by the military dictatorship of the 1970s for her role in Marxist armed groups, faces a fight to convince a disenchanted population that she deserves re-election in October.
In fact, the team Scolari put out on Friday night was exactly the same as the one that lifted the trophy a year ago.
The brief feel-good factor that emerged then will have to be magnified many times over if the World Cup is to paper over Rousseff and Brazil’s problems.
A repeat of the last time Brazil hosted the tournament, when they lost the 1950 decider to Uruguay, just won’t cut it.
Paul Rhys is a sports reporter writing for Al Jazeera from the World Cup in Brazil. Follow him on @PaulRhys_Sport or go to paulrhys.com.
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