World Cup Brazil 2014

In 2007, Brazil was officially appointed as host country of the World Cup 2014.

However, as FIFA – understandably – doesn’t want to draw attention away from the World Cup 2010 in South Africa, little has been said about the event in Brazil.

For example, both the Brazil Tourism Board and the Brazilian Football Confederation are forbidden from mentioning the World Cup in their marketing campaigns; Brazil will certainly call for volunteer work during the Cup, but can’t talk about it right now; FIFA is learning from the mistakes in South Africa (for example, the ticket selling system) and will announce changes to the Cup in Brazil, but nothing is being detailed right now.

This situation will change right after the final match of the World Cup 2010, on July 11th 2010.

After the final match, FIFA will put on air a 90 second movie about the World Cup in Brazil; such movie will be seen by billions of viewers from all over the World.

The movie is being shot by Fernando Meirelles, a well known Brazilian film maker who produced, among others, the movie Cidade de Deus (which, according to the users of IMDB, ranks among the 20 best movies of all times) and also several movies which helped Rio become the host of the Olympics in 2016 (one such movie is below).

After July 11th, not only Brazil, but the entire World will know that the World Cup 2014 will be in Brazil.

In a meeting with the Local Committee, the city of Belo Horizonte presented officially a claim to host the opening match of the World Cup 2014; representatives of the city (including the Mayor) produced a document with 54 projects, covering infrastructure, urban mobility, tourism and hotels, marketing and communication, public utilities and FIFA requirements.

According to city’s representatives, the main concern of FIFA is Mineirao stadium. FIFA wants the stadium of the opening match to fit as many viewers as possible, as well as 7 thousand journalists. After Mineirao is refurbished, it should fit about 70,000 attendants.

Some say that Belo Horizonte won’t have hotel beds to accommodate visitors, but the city disagrees; representatives confirm that Belo Horizonte lacks high standard hotels, but this isn’t too big a problem either (15 new hotels are being built, some of them of  ”very high standards”).

According to them, based on statistics from past Cups, the city of the opening match should have a number of beds around 40% of the stadium capacity; Belo Horizonte has today 34,000 beds in a radius of 100 km (60 miles) from the stadium, which should be enough.

The State is planning investments in the international airport of Confins, which should increase capacity from current 5 million to more than 10 million passengers per year in 2014.  At the same time, the airport of Pampulha, five minutes drive from Mineirao, will also be refurbished, and will be used by private and corporate jets.

Other cities are also interested in staging the opening match. The strongest candidates, besides Belo Horizonte, are Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Porto Alegre.

Source: Google and France Press.

According to Jerome Valcke, Secretary Genral, FIFA has learned its lesson from problems with Internet ticket sales in South Africa and will overhaul its pricing and ticketing ahead of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

FIFA made two major mistakes in the World Cup 2010: when initially made available, tickets could only be purchased after a complicated registration process in the internet; and prices of tickets sold for South African citizens only were considered expensive (see prices of tickets in 2010).

Last April, FIFA eased the rules, and started selling tickets over the counter and also increased the number of the least expensive tickets reserved for South Africans.

The measures were not enough to remedy the situation. In the rest of Africa, sales fell 76 percent below original predictions, with only 11,300 African visitors expected for the tournament, said South Africa’s Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk; the Minister vehemently blamed ”unaffordable pricing” and the exclusive use of the Internet sales channel, which he called “a huge mistake”.

South Africa is now expecting 300,000 foreign visitors for the tournament, 150,000 less than originally predicted

“We will start all ticketing policies from scratch for 2014. It could be that we would be facing some similar problems in Brazil”, Volcke added.

Since 2007, Brazil knew that we would host the World Cup, and since May 2009, the host cities knew they would stage matches; even so, after all this time, very little has been done to prepare Brazil for the World Cup (there are delays in stadiums, airports, telecom, transportation, etc).

Below, a few reasons which attempt to explain the delays.

First: cultural habits. Brazilians (particularly Governments) do not have the habit of planning, and, if planning, do not have the habit of keeping to the planned. Any foreign visitor who needs to have an appointment with a doctor knows that Brazilians do not keep time. A national institution in Brazil is the jeitinho, which could be translated as “not doing things the proper and timely way, but trying to make ends meet in a cunning way at the latest time”; unfortunely, FIFA doesn’t tolerate such methods.

Brazil lacks the money. Building a stadium, opening new highways, refurbishing airports, all this costs lots of money. Despite the enthusiasm that Governors and Mayors have demonstrated towards the economic potentials of a World Cup, the money isn’t in the coffers yet, and budget limitations sooner or later bring things to reality. A city such as Natal has a budget of about R$ 8 billion (source), and clearly can not invest R$ 1 billion for the Cup.

Legal limitations. Nine out of the twelve stadiums of the World Cup will be built or refurbished by the Governments. All Government contracts must follow an specific law; this law imposes minimum periods for bidders to present proposals – and if a bidder disagrees with the results, a dispute in Courts may last years.

After the bidding process is finished, then Government and contractors must get all apropriate licenses, such as technical, Historic heritage, environment approvals. Getting licenses to build a new draining and sewage system carved under an old heritage stadium such as Fonte Nova, in Salvador, following all applying norms, can take a lot of time (things could be sped up if they had been planned before hand, but they were not).

Private stadiums (only three: Morumbi, Arena da Baixada, Beira Rio) are not restrained by the bidding laws. On the other hand, the owner of the stadiums will think twice before investing their money in an enterprise with unknown returns: is it worthy to invest US$ 200 million in a stadium to stage three or four matches?

Each of these factors could delay a project for a few months; put them all together, and the result is a several months delay.

Yesterday, FIFA General Secretary asked in an interview if the works for the World Cup would start only after carnival.

Today, newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, one of the most important in Brazil, published a report today about the FIFA concerns with the delays in Brazil.

Translation:

“FIFA is starting to plan for changes in the list of cities and stadiums which should host matches of the World Cup 2014. Decisions shall be made after the visit of the Local Organising Committee, between May 5th and 20th, to the 12 host cities. Among the decisions, one is probably to rule out Morumbi as one of the stadiums; another, very likely as well, is to replace the host cities which are not complying with the deadlines.

Cities which were not chosen as hosts, such as Goiânia and Belém, may be recalled now. In Johannesburg, FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke abandoned diplomacy, criticized the delay in the works of the stadium, and warned: Brazil must work hard to earn the rights to host the World Cup 2014 and the Olympic Games 2016.

These visits to check out the stadiums and to assess the schedules of the works in each of the cities (first visit to Sao Paulo and last one to Salvador), will provide FIFA with information to, after September, make the necessary changes to avoid a fiasco in 2014.

FIFA want all stadia ready by December 2012, one year and a half before the World Cup and six months before the Confederations Cup, and do not consider to cut down the number of host cities.

The problem is that less than half of the cities has any works started. FIFA is regreting to have allowed Brazil to be the only candidate to host the Cup. These strong declarations by FIFA staff are complaints which were already being heard in the backstages; behind closed doors, FIFA had alread lost patience with Brazil.

At FIFA, still nobody talks about the possibility of replacing Brazil as host country of 2014. Valcke assured that such possibility doesn’t exist right now, even with FIFA admitting that there countries which could get ready for the event in a very short notice.

FIFA changed their proceedings to accept the Brazilian requests, but Brazil assured that everything would be made within time, which is not happening.”

On March 3rd 2010, FIFA was informed that the works in all stadiums for the World Cup 2014 were behind schedule; at that occasion, CBF and FIFA determined a new deadline: by May 3rd, every stadium should have at least started works – building or refurbishing – to catch up with FIFA’s schedule.

Today, May 3rd, exactly two months later, barely anything changed.

According to international news sources,  FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke declared: “I got a report on the status quo of the Brazilian stadiums. I have to say it is not very nice. There are a number (of stadiums) with red lights already, which is amazing. It is amazing how Brazil is already late. And I am not just talking about Morumbi or Maracana stadiums, I am talking about a number of stadiums.”

Much more bombastic, though, was an interview to Brazilian newspaper O Globo (click here); according to the newspaper, Volcke said:

I asked Ricardo Teixeira (president of CBF): how come you signed all those documents and don’t comply with them? We don’t want a rushed World Cup, organized at the last minute.

This year, you have Presidential election, nothing is going to happen. Next year, there is carnival. Are you going to start working only after carnival?

See also repercussions at Yahoo and Reuters.

Asked whether FIFA would consider to cut down the number of host cities from twelve to eight, Vakcke said that “for the time being, we have 12 host cities and we are not in a period where we have to make decisions”.