What ever happened the last weeks, months and years, the World Cup 2014 will start in Brazil today. Whether the stadiums are ready, the urban projects cancelled, the (foreign) football fan has to climb the mud hills and the Brazilian people unsatisfied with the behaviour of their government and other officials, the World Cup openings ceremony will be held at 17.00hrs local time (São Paulo).
“Não vai ter Copa” has turned into “There is a World Cup”.
The Brazilian and foreign football (soccer) fan has either occupied his seat in the stadium in São Paulo or he/she will be transforming the living room in a mini football stadium, tuning the TV and watching with friends the openings match between Brazil and Croatia.
And now it’s time for a laugh. Some political and World Cup related cartoons, and some pictures of translations in English.
I also have a comment about some high-profile visitors of the stadium.
Three illustrious persons will not be present in the stadium, and if one of them is, he/she will avoid any publicity and hide behind the back of somebody else. They are the real motors of this disastrous project and have every reason to stay far away from the openings ceremony as Augusto Nunes writes at his blog “Direto ao Ponto”:
Without doubt ex-president Lula will see the World Cup matches holed up at home. He doesn’t dare to show his face in the Itaquerão stadium, which wouldn’t even exist without the intervention of the most influential supporter of the football club Corinthians. He was the peddler of the contractor, who brokered the construction to Constructora Odebrecht and induced the BNDES bank to fund the billion dollar project. Lula spent years dreaming of ovations he would hear erupting in the arenas of the 12 host-cities. Fears for the booing forces him to accept that nothing is better than watching football on television and take a beer from the fridge in the kitchen.
Ricardo Teixeira, the ex-president of the Brazilian Football Federation, certainly will see the World Cup holed in Miami. Walking around semi- clandestinely in Rio, he didn’t wait for the first police whistle to find refuge again in his sumptuous hideaway in Florida. “He doesn’t want to expose himself to the hostile manifestations”, confessed a friend of the former superpower, who dreamed of the throne of the FIFA, before added to the Interpol list of likely culprits.
Dilma Rousseff, the actual president of Brazil, imagined, as inevitable as the seasons are changing, that the 2014 World Cup would be the most glorious and penultimate stage of the election campaign for a second term. At this very moment, she tries to build up the courage to attend the opening ceremony. But she has been warned that nothing in the world will make it safe to open her mouth in front of the crowd. Fears of booing never did well to vocal cords.
An excerpt from the post reproduced in the Reprise Valley section found, that “Millions of Brazilians have been treated as if they all were patriots of a hen-house or professional suckers”. If some sense was left to them, the cheaters have to take into account the warning in the title: “The billion dollar spree of the con artists, who forged the costs of the World Cup, will end with waking up the deprived crowd”.
Let’s see what happens. No one knows whether or not the Brazilian national team will win the hexa, the sixth World Cup. The terror the trinity feels, leaves it crystal clear that Lula, Rousseff and Ricardo Teixeira lost the World Cup before it even started.
Brazil In Hot Pants 