World Cup Brazil 2014

On June 1st 2009, FIFA announced the twelve host cities of the World Cup 2014 in Brazil.

There was a big expectation about those host cities. These cities will benefit in several aspects from the World Cup, such as investments in infrastructure and massive international marketing.

Some of the cities knew that they would be a host. Rio de Janeiro is the best known city in Brazil (Maracanã is already defined as stage of the final match); Sao Paulo is the richest city in Brazil; Brasilia, the capital of the country (Sao Paulo and Brasilia are still fighting to host the opening match of the Cup); Salvador, Recife, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Porto Alegre are important economic and cultural regional hubs of Brazil.

So, this makes eight cities with a guaranteed spot. It was of interest of the Brazilian Government and CBF that cities representatives of all regions in Brazil were chosen, so as to show to the world the rich variety of Brazilian culture and scenarios. The other four cities were chosen according to these criterium.

So, in the Northeast of Brazil, the region where the sun shines all year long, the cities of Natal and Fortaleza were chosen. These cities are rather small, but are popular destinations for Brazilian tourists; the well developed tourist infrastructure (hotels, airports, etc) was a big advantage of these cities.

There had to be a host in the Amazon, a region of Brazil which attracts world attention. Rio Branco was a candidate, but, too far into the jungle and with poor infrastructure, had no chances; Manaus and Belém were the stronger candidates. Belém had the advantage of being nearer the rest of Brazil and the rest of the world. Manaus won, thanks to a stronger political influence and probably because it is located deeper into the Amazon (an eco-tourism network, albeit incipient, is better developed in Manaus than in Belém).

Likewise, there should be a host in Pantanal, the Brazilian wetlands, one of the richest ecosystems in the World; Cuiaba and Campo Grande were the candidates.  Campo Grande is located right in the middle of Pantanal, and was favorite to win; however, thanks to a better project, Cuiabá was chosen.

Besides Belém and Campo Grande, other Brazilian cities were candidates to host but were not chosen: Goiânia (despite having one of the most modern stadiums in Brazil, the Serra Dourada) was too close to Brasília, and CBF wanted to spread the hosts; Florianópolis is a mid sized city in the South, with a strong European heritage, and was surprisingly not chosen (Natal took the place of Florianópolis).

So, these cities were candidates to host, but didn’t make it: Campo Grande, Goiânia, Florianópolis, Rio Branco and Belém.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm and is filed under cities.