The announcement at the beginning of November that Brazil had been chosen to host the 2014 World Cup Finals has heralded some intemperate and even lurid copy from many sections of the press, centred on both the way Brazil was selected and the high level of organized and violent crime in the country, which it is posited, is sure to blight the competition.
It almost seems to have been forgotten that the World Cup Finals is the premier tournament for football nations and pieces of writing about the prospects in 2014 of Brazil as a national football team or articles concerning the chance for the country to use the competition as a vehicle for more equitable social and economic development are conspicuous by their absence.
A lot of the media has over-reacted to the fact that Brazil has been chosen at all, when it was obvious that the country was going to get the nod for a long time. Brazil had only one competitor in its efforts to stage the Finals, Colombia, which withdrew its bid well before the date for choosing the host was due.
With 32 finalists at the 2014 Finals, Brazil is the only Latin American country other than Colombia which has enough cities to stage the tournament, given FIFA's directive that no more than one city is allowed to provide two stadiums for matches.
When the Colombian bid was rescinded it then became obvious for a variety of reasons that Brazil would be selected as hosts. In the first place, the South American Football Association had made it clear to FIFA that a country in their region must stage the 2014 Finals, given the fact that this had not been the case since Argentina hosted the 1978 competition.
Moreover, Brazil had the support of the South American Football Association . In addition, Brazil are the most worthy hosts of any country in terms of World Cup pedigree, having won the tournament five times (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002) and 2014 marks the centennial anniversary of the Brazilian Football Association. Finally, Brazil are able to call on the legendary Pele to be Chairperson of the World Cup Organizing Committee, giving a boost to the marketing and merchandising.
Thus, despite blathering from Blatter, the ethically challenged FIFA President, that the largest Latin American country would not necessarily be selected as hosts if they failed to meet requirements and that a suitable replacement could be found at short notice, Brazil was always going to be chosen when Colombia dropped out. The media therefore had a long time to take that on board and to prepare some measured copy once it was made official, something a significant number of them have conspicuously failed to accomplish.
The media have also heavily and at times hysterically pushed the line that serious crime is so rife in Brazil that it is going to blight the whole tournament. If some reports are given credibility many teams are unlikely to be able to field eleven players for matches in the Finals since so many will have been the victims of violent robberies.
Of course crime is a major problem in Brazil. More than half of the country's wealth is owned by one per cent of the population. Corruption and waste means that less than ten per cent of state spending on social services goes to the very poor. Hopes, which were quite high on his accession to office, that 'left-wing' and 'populist' President (Luis Inacio) Lula (da Silva) would redress social and economic inequities have faded as his tenure has proceeded.
There is an ongoing problem with police brutality, some of it aimed at street children and organized gangs, such as the First Capital Command, (PCC) based in Sao Paolo and the Red Command centred more on Rio de Janeiro control extensive drugs and arms running networks. In May 2006 the PCC organised nationwide riots in prisons which took the authorities by surprise and shocked the public.
However, Brazil, currently ranked 69th in the Human Development Index compiled by the United Nations has improved its index score steadily over the past few years and both literacy rates and educational enrolment rates have improved. Lula is astute enough as a leader to use the 2014 Finals as a chance to create employment, particularly for the marginalised urban population, based on improving the infrastructure of the country.
Such jobs could provide an alternative to working for criminal gangs and/or petty crime. One billion dollars has already been set aside for work on stadiums. The potential for such a scenario has not been explored by the press since it was announced that Brazil had been chosen to host the 2014 Finals. Scare stories are easier to provide shock-horror headlines for and to write.
Finally, what on earth has happened to stories concerning football itself and, in particular, about Brazil's chances of winning the tournament. The five times winners will be desperate to triumph in front of a fervent nation. Brazil came third at the 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship, losing 2-1 to arch-rivals Argentina in the semi-finals and were beaten 3-0 by Mexico in the final of the 2005 FIFA Under-17 World Cup. Not good enough maybe by their own high standards, but results to show that they will clearly be a force to be reckoned with when playing at home in the 2014 World Cup Finals. It is time more stories were written about the players who may be the stars of Brazil when they host the World Cup Finals in 2014.
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