World Cup Brazil 2014

The Government of Brasilia signed yesterday, after the due bidding process, the contract to build the new National Stadium.

The winner of the bidding process was the consortium formed by Andrade Gutierrez and Via Engenharia; the contract value is R$ 696 million (a little less than US$ 400 million). The Governor affirmed that Brasilia already has the cash needed to build the stadium, but is still considering to take a loan from the National Development Bank.

The National Stadium will be the new name of the current Mané Garrincha Stadium, with 40,000 seats, opened in 1974, which belongs to the Government of the Federal District of Brazil.

Mané Garrincha will go through a complete overhaul, but will not be completely demolished. The photos show images of the old Mané Garrincha and the New National Stadium.

The National Stadium will have 70,000 seats and will be one of the largest stadiums of the World Cup 2014; as such, the venue is claiming to be the stage of the opening and one of the semi-final matches of the event (Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo are also interested in hosting those matches).

The cost, which is already of the highest among all stadiums in Brazil (second only to Maracana, which will cost R$ 720 million), will likely go even higher. First, because the cost doesn’t include the Telecom system – which will be planned only after FIFA defines which technology shall be used). And, if the Stadium is chosen to host the opening match, then it will need to have all seats covered – a demand by FIFA -, which will also have to be included in the price.

The works should be finished by December 2012, so that the stadium will be ready to be one of the venues of the Confederations Cup 2013.

When asked whether, given the lack of football tradition in Brasilia, the National Stadium won’t become a white elephant after the Cup, the Governor responded that “several companies have contacted us for partnerships, and the stadium will become an entertainment center after 2014″.

This week, The Guardian published a report about the World Cup 2014, and affirmed that FIFA and CBF chose too many cities to host games (twelve), and the criteria utilized were not the best; a consequence of those bad choices will be that stadiums will be left unused after the event.

The Guardian said nothing new: the Financial Times had already said that the stadiums would become white elephants; it is well known that FIFA and CBF make decisions based largely on financial and political criteria; the twelve host cities were  too many and not the best ones.

So, which Brazilian cities should be chosen to host games in 2014, if the main criterium was number of popular teams (i.e., number of fans which actually would attend games, even after the Cup 2014 is finished)?

The city of Sao Paulo has three very popular teams: Corinthians, Sao Paulo and Palmeiras (which just announced that the new Arena Palestra Italia will be ready in 2012). There are several other large cities in the State of Sao Paulo where there are competitive teams: Santos, Santo Andre, Sao Caetano, Campinas (with two important teams: Ponte Preta and Guarani), Presidente Prudente and a few others.

All above mentioned teams have participated of the Top Division of Brazil National Championship (several teams have won it), and any of those cities could build and use a 40,000 seat stadium. So, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to designate two or even three cities in Sao Paulo as host cities of 2014.

Next, there is Rio de Janeiro. All the major teams are concentrated in the capital city: Flamengo (by far, the team with most fans in Brazil), Fluminense, Vasco da Gama and Botafogo; none of these teams, however, has a big stadium, and until a few years ago all major matches were staged at Maracanã.

For the Pan American Games 2007, the Government of Rio built a brand new stadium, the Joao Havelange; after the Games, the stadium was rented by Botafogo, and today it stages several important matches.

So, it would be very reasonable to nominate both Maracanã and João Havelange as venues of the World Cup 2014.

In Belo Horizonte there are two very powerful teams, Atletico MG and Cruzeiro, and a third popular team, America MG. All of them play at Mineirao, so it makes all sense to refurbish that stadium for the Cup.

In Porto Alegre, a unique situation. There are two equally very strong and very popular teams, Gremio and Internacional (both won the World Tournament of Clubs). Both have their own big private stadiums, namely Olimpico (the new Arena Gremio is in progress) and Beira-Rio.

CBF chose Beira-Rio as the only venue in Porto Alegre (much to the chagrin of Gremio fans), but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to appoint two venues in that city. This idea makes even more sense if one remembers that the State of Rio Grande do Sul (of which Porto Alegre is the capital) makes borders with Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, which are already used to visiting the city in the holidays.

In Curitiba, there are three dominant teams: Atletico PR, Coritiba and Paraná. Atlético PR owns their own stadium, Arena da Baixada, which was the venue chosen in the State.

In Salvador, an easy decision for CBF: there are only two very popular teams, Vitoria and Bahia, and none has a big stadium. So, the venue chosen was Fonte Nova, which belongs to the city of Salvador.

In Recife, probably the toughest decision of all. The city has three popular teams, Sport, Santa Cruz and Nautico (the supremacy among them changes over the decades, there has never been a permanent dominance), and all of them have their own private stadiums (Ilha do Retiro, Arruda and Aflitos). As the fans are fanatic supporters not only of the teams, but of the stadiums as well, it was certain that the city would be a host, but nobody knew which stadium would the venue.

The Government of Pernambuco decided to build a new stadium. As real estate in Recife and neighbour Olinda is very expensive, this new stadium called City of the Cup (actually, a Business Complex including the stadium, shopping centers, hotels, etc) in the small city of Sao Lourenço da Mata. Money will be needed not only to build the stadium, but to create all the infrastructure around it (there are plans to expand the metro line and create new highways).

Now, if there is a candidate to White Elephant of 2014, City of the Cup is it. Not only because it is far away from the city, or because tickets will probably be more expensive there. The reason is that none of the three clubs will stop playing at their own stadiums to go playing at the Government stadium – the President of Nautico would be fired if he agreed to play in Sao Lourenço when Sport kept playing at his home Ilha do Retiro.

The best solution in Recife would be to reach an agreement among the teams (with a draw, if necessary) to choose one stadium to be the venue.

In Fortaleza there are two teams, Ceara and Fortaleza. Both have only occasional appearance in the Top National Division (Ceara is there in 2010, Fortaleza was in 2009), but even the local championships are very disputed, and the fans are very enthusiastic. So, it made sense to choose Fortaleza as host (the city is by the beach, and is close to Europe and USA) and the public stadium Castelão as venue.

So, if CBF had chosen these ten venues in these eight cities, there would be good chances that the stadiums would be well attended after the World Cup 2014 is over.

Continue here: the White Elephants of the FIFA WC 2014.

After the Final of the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa, more and more people will be interested in the World Cup 2014.

Below, a brief report of the current situation.

Full schedule of the World Cup 2014 wasn’t released yet. It is known, however, that the matches will happen between mid-June and mid-July of 2014.

The official logo was already presented, but neither the mascot nor other symbols were. Several promotional movies inviting visitors are ready to go – the first one being displayed right after the final match in 2010.

It will be winter in Brazil, but temperatures will be much more pleasant than in South Africa. It is likely that matches will be played, in local time, at mid-morning (around 10 am), short afternoon (around 1 pm) and late afternoon (around 5 pm); that will allow audiences in North America and Europe to watch the games at comfortable times (not sooner than 6 am in Western North America, not later than 10 pm in Eastern Europe).

Tickets are not for sale yet. FIFA already said that there will be big changes from the system adopted in South Africa, so as to make tickets cheaper and easier to be bought.

It is likely that there will be jobs and volunteering opportunities for the World Cup, but there is no further information yet.

Since May 2009, the host cities have been known. To meet interests of FIFA, the Brazilian Confederation and the Brazilian politicians, it was defined that there will be matches in twelve cites (there are doubts if those many are indeed the most recommended).

There will be also twelve stadiums; nine of them are publicly owned, and three are private property. None of the stadiums is ready; a few will be built from stratch, most will be fully overhauled.

Work in all stadiums is delayed. FIFA already manifested preoccupation with the delays. Public stadiums have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy; private stadiums have troubles finding money. This blog keeps track of the works in the stadiums.

Despite claims in contrary by the authorities, the infrastructure works are already delayed. According to several reports, Brazilian airports are not ready to cope with the expected flux of passengers in 2014 (600,000 foreign visitors and 3,000,000 of Brazilians). Recently, the Federal Government passed a law to speed up the works in airports.

The bullet train between Rio and Sao Paulo will not be ready for 2014. Oi Telecom was contracted to provide telecom infrastructure. Very little else has been done regarding infrastructure.

The vuvuzelas were prohibited in Brazil (ops, that was just a wishing).

The graph below shows the recent increase in accesses to this site.

British newspaper Financial Times published yesterday (July 8th 2010) an article: World Cup 2014: march of the white elephants. The President of CBF denies problems, but, as several other posts of this blog show, they indeed exist.

“Even with four years to go before Brazil hosts the 2014 competition, experts reckon at least six of the 12 grounds to be used for games will turn into white elephants when the tournament ends.

Brazil’s football stadiums are old and crumbling and it is to renovate or build 12 arenas at an estimated cost of around R$5.3 bn (around US$2.9 bn). Nine of the 12 grounds are publicly owned and more than 90 percent of that total expenditure is expected to come from public coffers (the publicly owned stadiums suffer with the bureaucracy, whereas the private owned suffer from lack of money). The government development bank is offering a credit line of R$400m ($220m) for each stadium.

However, the planning has so far been typically Brazilian, i.e. bureaucratic, disorganised and slow. In May, football’s governing body FIFA criticised Brazil for being “amazingly late”.

A new report by Brazilian  auditors Crowe Horwath RCS said stadiums in Brasilia, Cuiabá, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, and Recife are overly expensive and have little chance of recouping their costs after the tournament.

Stadiums in the larger and richer cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, and Salvador are less of a concern.

The answer is to build smaller stadiums (always an issue with FIFA, which says the smallest World Cup grounds must seat at least 30,000), or make them just one part of a complex that includes shops, hotels, convention centres or other such attractions.

One other option – cutting back the number of venues from 12 to 10 or even eight – is perhaps the most likely. The tardy preparations already have officials publicly suggesting that could happen.

It would save money. And blushes.”

A few weels ago, FIFA officially informed that “Morumbi stadium is excluded from the 2014 FIFA World Cup“. That same note estates that  the “City of São Paulo sent recently to the LOC a sixth project, which will not be examined as it has been received long after the deadline.

Today, Morumbi is the second biggest stadium in Brazil, second only to Maracanã (for 2014, if the respective projects go as planned, other stadia could be bigger than Morumbi, such as Beira-Rio). The stadium belongs to Sao Paulo FC, and for a long time it was the biggest private stadium in the World.

Why then Morumbi, which was claiming to host the opening match of the World Cup, was excluded from the event? The answer is, basically, money.

São Paulo FC owns the stadium, and should pay most expenses to adapt the venue to meet FIFA requirements. It was estimated that it would take R$ 650 million (about US$ 350 million) to implement the design presented to FIFA (the sixth project mentioned by FIFA was an attempt to reduce the cost to R$ 265 million, or about US$ 150 million). It looks like Sao Paulo FC double checked the numbers, and decided that the investment was not worthy.

The public stadiums don’t suffer the same problem, because the Federal Government opened generous credit lines to finance the building or restoring of stadiums; the Governments taking the loans still have to provide collaterals, but Governors don’t hesitate in taking the money – for the World Cup brings immediate political gains, whereas the debts will be paid in the distant future. São Paulo FC and the owners of the other private stadia talked to the Federal Development Bank about loans, but they didn’t get into agreement.

The Governments  of São Paulo (both the State and the city) were not much enthusiastic about pumping money into the project, either. Besides adapting the stadium, FIFA requires extensive changes in the neighbourhood, such as more transportation, more parking space, more and wider access streets – and all of this is incumbent to the Governments.

Morumbi is one of the poshest quarters in Sao Paulo, and the Governments knows that any infrastructure intervention here is very expensive. Both the State and the city of Sao Paulo are ruled by the same Party coalition (more to the right wing than the Federal Government), and they often say that spending money with basic health and education could be wisere than funding the World Cup – the Mayor of Sao Paulo is in South Africa, and declared that “if Sao Paulo can’t host the matches, so be it”.

It is not a coincidence that, along with Sao Paulo, Curitiba is the host city which causes most preoccupation to CBF. The stadium of Curitiba, Arena da Baixada, is also private owned, and the city is also known for being a wise spender of public money. And it will be no surprise if Beira-Rio, in Porto Alegre (the third private owned stadium), also becomes reason of concern soon.

Today, June 11th 2010, we saw the opening match of the World Cup 2010 (South Africa 1 x 1 Mexico).

At the very moment that the ball started rolling (4 pm, local time), the temperature in Johannesburg was 18º C (64º F); the matches which happen at night experienced even lower temperatures. And, as the Southern Hemisphere moves into winter, the temperatures should fall even more.

Update: on June 15th, the day that Brazil played against North Korea, the temperature in Johannesburg was -4º C (-24º F).

Considering that Brazil is also in the Southern Hemisphere, what temperatures can be expected during the World Cup, which should take place between June and July of 2014?

The graphs below show the expected weather for today, June 6th 2010, in all Brazilian cities which will stage games of the Cup. The graphs show minimum temperature, maximum temperature, sunny/rainy weather and intensity of Ultra-Violet rays.

In the cities by the sea (namely: Natal, Recife, Fortaleza, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro), average temperatures are high, even during the winter. In Manaus and Cuiabá, which are located near the Equatorial Line, temperatures are also high during all year.

In the Southern cities of Porto Alegre and Curitiba, temperatures are expected to be low during the matches. Visitors should definitively bring their coats.

Belo Horizonte and São Paulo are located near the Tropic Line, and both are at a high altitude (around 800 m, 2,500 ft); this makes the weather of these cities more unpredictable.

The World Cup 2014 will be warmer than the World Cup 2010.

One of the most serious concerns of the organizers of the World Cup 2010 is with the violence in South Africa; and the preoccupation is not so much with episodic terrorist attacks (which can be more easily controlled), but with the day to day violence (assaults, stray bullets, gang fights), which may kill people anytime, anywhere – and whose solution takes years of concerted planning and work.

This problem afflicts the organizers of the World Cup 2014, as well. And no other city is more under scrutiny than Rio de Janeiro, the most important of the host cities of the Cup, and the host of the Olympic Games of 2016.

Rio is aware of the responsibility, and is taking measures to reduce violence.

For many years the Government treated violence combat as a war, where the enemies (mostly drug traffickers) should be killed; this is well portrayed in the movie City of God (which is voted as one of the 20 best movies of all times). The problem with this strategy is that many innocent civilians are also killed, and the survivors start to see the Police as an enemy as evil as the traffickers; and, whereas Police come and go, the traffickers are always around.

Recently, the strategy was changed. The Government is now creating UPP – Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora – Pacifying Police Units – in the most violent areas of Rio.

Every UPP has a physical structure, with a well sized staff. The Police officers  (as much as possible, only recently recruited people) are assigned to an specific UPP, hence creating links with the community.  In case the goals to reduce violence are met, the UPP staff gain a salary bonus.

Besides, along with every UPP (and the subsequent reduction in violence), the Government builds schools, health centers, leisure spaces; and trailing the Government, come the utilities companies (electricity, transportation, internet, etc).

The idea is to make the communities (whose vast majority is composed by honest, working people) believe that, rather than violence and traffic,  now the Law and Order should reign.

The graphic to the left shows that, even though there is still a long way to go, the levels of violence in Rio have been consistently decreasing.

Number of murderers is coming to 30 per 100,000 inhabitants; for comparison, in South Africa this figure is about 49.6 per 100,000 (source is here; figure quoted as of June 2010, and may change in the future).

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.

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.”