Brazil in the World Cup 2010

If Brazil wins the World Cup 2010, each Brazilian player will have a cash prize of R$ 1,000,000.00, which, by current rates, would be exchanged by a bit more than US$ 500,000 or a bit more than € 400,000.

Is that plenty or little?

Today, minimum wage in Brazil is R$ 550 per month. So, a worker in Brazil who gets minimum wage would have to work more than 150 years to get that much of money.  That makes R$ 1,000,000.00 look like a lot of money.

However, several players in Brazil are paid more than a million dollars per year; sponsors of the Brazil team pay millions and millions per year; FIFA pays about US$ 30 million to the country who wins the World Cup. After winning the European Champions League, each player of Inter Milan was paid € 300,000.  Thinking that way, US$ 500,000 or € 400,000 don’t look too impressive.

However, it is unlikely that any Brazilian player complain about that.

First, because several players seem to be thankful just for being in the team. There was a strong popular clamor for coach Dunga to leave out players like Josue, Felipe Melo and Elano and call up Ronaldinho, Ganso, Neymar instead.

Second, because all players know that they would be accused of being anti-patriotic or mercenaries. In the 1990 World Cup, all Brazilian players agreed that the prize proposed by CBF was too small, and posed for a photo with their hands covering the sponsor brand; it ended up that that team had one of the worst performances ever.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 8:53 pm and is filed under business, players.