In Rio and Manaus Fifa's racketeers will show they are the only game in town
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Version 0 of 1. So the Manaus pitch is rubbish, a patch of burnt sand with streaky lines across it. The useless Brazilians cannot plant a hundred yards of lawn without fouling it up. How dare they insult the golden angels of English and Italian football. The groundsman should be fed to the Amazon piranhas. Manaus is a bungle in the jungle. So say the British tabloids. Yet it is our fault. Britain continues to support the Fifa racketeers who imposed this event on Brazil to make money. Britain's Football Association still pays obeisance to an organisation that demands $11.5bn in subsidy from Brazil's taxpayers, then pockets $2bn profit from tickets, sponsorship and television, and squirrels it away in a Swiss bank account. When I was in Brazil in April it was obvious that to stage such a massive event was unwise. It was not just the riots and the strikes, the result of wider but genuine grievances. It was obscene to splurge such conspicuous extravagance in a country whose economy could barely sustain it. Brazil is a poor country, but not a politically unsophisticated one. Only the inducement of massive chauvinist hysteria was likely to smother widespread and legitimate criticism. Support in Brazil for the World Cup has slumped from 80% in 2007 to under a half. Street protesters have labelled the country's football ambassadors – Pele and Ronaldo – "enemies of the people". At tonight's opening game, neither Fifa's boss, Sepp Blatter, nor Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, are allowed to speak, for fear of the jeers. If the Brazil team does not win the tournament next month, the vengeance of the crowd could be awesome. The organisers of the Rio Olympics, scheduled for 2016 and no less controversial, are already shaking in their shoes. These international mega-events are out of control and beyond accountability. When South Africa "won" the 2010 World Cup, it was promised an economic bonanza by Fifa, and duly spent $3bn on stadiums and related infrastructure. South Africa eventually made a return of an estimated $330m in tourism and other receipts. Fifa meanwhile walked off with $3.5bn in profits from television and sponsorship fees, with no thought of giving them back to South Africa. It was nothing short of grand larceny. Of course Brazil should not have built 12 football venues rather than the usual eight. But such is the political import of these events its government thought the "benefits" should be spread nationwide. Blinded by the glory of being awarded the cup, it spent $4bn on stadiums alone, or £62.5m per match, much of it disappearing into a corrupt construction industry. The Manaus stadium was intended to be financed entirely by "sponsors". Instead it has cost Brazil's taxpayers $270m. Even then it is not fit for purpose, which is to hold just four football matches. Brazil neither sought nor got revenue guarantees from Fifa. It excused Fifa $242m in taxes on its income, mocking Fifa's claims of a focus on legacy. In South Africa the federation demanded a parliamentary act setting up "Fifa World Cup courts", primarily to prosecute anyone advertising products other than those of Fifa's sponsors, but incidentally sentencing two muggers to 15 years in jail. In Brazil it has likewise secured a law overturning a strict rule against alcohol in grounds – so its sponsor, Budweiser, can sell beer to fans. Fifa is beyond the pale. This week Blatter called the British press racist for exposing his organisation's corruption. He and his sidekick, Jérôme Valcke, told Brazil it deserved "a kick up the backside" for its unpreparedness. They seem unaware of the toll their demands take on the political economies of host nations. They treat governments as simpering sub-contractors, who respond by lying, spending and praying that all will be well on the night. Some benefits can emerge from the accompanying attention. The lively Rio website Catalytic Communities, this week pleaded with journalists now swarming the favelas not to see them as "the most stigmatised urban communities in the world". They were not all lurid, drug-ridden hellholes, but mostly diverse places driven by self-help and "developed by residents themselves over decades and in the absence of state support or investment". The recent efforts at police "pacification" may have often been hamfisted, but favelas offer cheap central housing for poor people, when most cities would have ejected them to the outskirts. That said, the reality is that a $4.5bn favela regeneration plan, Morar Carioca – another of the phoney "legacies" trumpeted by Fifa and the Olympics – has simply not materialised. If anything, regeneration has slowed in favour of "pacification". The idea that grand sports projects are nothing to do with politics is ludicrous. They are drenched in political chauvinism and extract vast sums from domestic taxpayers. Nations that might reasonably devote resources to poverty reduction or infrastructure investment are required to build cathedrals to sport, and to western European standards. I enjoy watching football, but I cannot see how it sends otherwise reasonable people into a delirium normally reserved for apocalyptic religion. Even the satirist John Oliver, in his brilliant demolition of Fifa on the American television show Last Week Tonight, felt obliged to confess he "loved the World Cup", as if it were some kind of Plantagenet test of war-urge virility. In the House of Commons on Wednesday party leaders vied with each other in chauvinist banter, as if Blatter himself were writing their scripts. Not a word about corruption. The British media's current World Cup coverage records Brazil's budgetary woes, lists Rio's living conditions and alleges Fifa chicanery. But it sounds like a terms-and-conditions clause in a financial ad. It is prelude to yet more hyperventilation on "England's chances" and England's glory. It is on that hyperventilation that Fifa relies to continue its rackets. I believe England should pull out of Fifa and encourage others to do likewise. It should stage a clean World Cup that does not enrich its organisers, build white elephants and bankrupt the poor. I can see no argument with another Brazilian star, Romario, who calls Fifa bosses "thieves and sons of bitches" and asks how Brazil can afford "first-world stadiums when we cannot afford first-world hospitals and schools". But then as Roman emperors knew, insecure leaders always pander to popular hysteria. In the matter of bread and circuses, circuses come before bread. |