The Vasco Fiasco

The Vasco Fiasco has gained more attention though this blog than it did in the Brazilian media. Last week, I talked with the BBC World Fooball Report about it and comments continue to flow in from all corners. Brazilians are horrified that I would consider leaving my team, expressing concern that I’m not staying with Vasco. In Brazil (as in other parts of the world) rejecting a team is a radical thing to do and those who think that this is not tormenting me deeply are very much mistaken.

To reiterate what happened: Vasco were found by an investigator to have maintained their youth trainees in slave-like conditions. I found this revolting, horrifying and immoral and in my disgust wrote, “I am not this Vasco, I reject this club.” This is a point that needs some clarification and along the way I hope to plumb the depths of footballing identities in Brazil.

I am not, as some have suggested, choosing to leave Vasco for another club, pick up another mantle, or start watching the NBA playoffs. I understand and am deeply impacted by what I write about. There is no need to justify myself, the depth of my knowledge of Brazilian football, or the relative profundity of my Vasco-identidade.

My rejection of this Vasco suggests that there is another Vasco. I believe this to be true. While the realities of Vasco’s project of social inclusion and racial democracy were probably never as pure and altruistic as we would like to believe, within the well-documented history of the club as a place where Rio’s most disenfranchised were able to use football and the Vasco club as a vehicle for social inclusion, there are elements of truth. What is perhaps more important is that we believe that this possibility exists and that we act to ensure its realization. Leaving Vasco makes this impossible, but it is also impossible to “cheer” (está impossível torcer) for a team whose labor pool is re-supplied with slaves, or indentured servants, or voluntary serfs. Leaving is torture, staying is moral turpitude, doing nothing is impossible, so I write. Mas que adianta marcar gol de letra em posição de impedimento? But what good does it do to score in an offside position? [losing all lyric sensibility in English, btw]

That Vasco physically and psychologically abuses its youth trainees in the name of economic expediency kills the club’s claim to its own history and shoves in our faces the cruel mechanisms of football’s political economy. We are all happy to ignore these realities while watching games, stressing out about results, arguing about the merits of our clubs. Yet critical reflection upon our own identities as football fans surely must lead us to the point where we take some responsibility for the Darwinian cesspool into which tens of thousands of young Brazilian lives are thrown in order to produce the nucleus around which our identities cluster.

This is my major point of contention. I am Vasco but I do not, cannot and will not torcer for this team until I know that the institution has been reformed and that youth players compensated, educated, and cared for to the highest possible standard. Ignoring the current practices legitimates them. If installing world class facilities requires a few years in the second or third division, tudo bem! I prefer to lose with well-fed, well-educated, and well-cared for players than to have a championship trophy hoisted onto the tombstones of teenagers. Rejecting Vasco is radical, but not nearly as radical as SLAVERY!

The commentaries on the original post are clearly not random but reflect more general ideas that legitimate slavery in Brazilian football. The “love it or leave it” attitude is easy enough to ignore. The earnest apologists are a bit more difficult. One recent comment said that there is “a media bias against Vasco’s president” therefore the findings of the public prosecutor’s office “need to be questioned”. Or that the trainees “don’t have contracts” so they can’t be considered slaves. WTF? Slaves have contracts? Is Vasco only football? Are Vascainos so ready to trade results for human dignity? Emotions are so tightly wound around Brazilian football that it makes conversations about identity and reality nearly impossible, prompting knee-jerk reactions that allow the club directors to hijack identities for profit and power.

The way forward is difficult. If Vasco is to have any claim to its own history it must again make decisions based in values that are not associated with the market, that are not aligned with the interests of the “elite clubs”, that are founded in conceptions of human dignity and social justice. It is the responsibility of all Vascainos to reshape the club so that these values will be represented on the field, in the boardroom and in the bodies and minds of our youth. 

Stop Crying, Vasco doesn't need you...

The central issues that I am processing in relation to this Vasco fiasco are reflected in the comments that were left on the site. The first says – “Stop crying. You aren’t and never were a real Vascaino. Vasco doesn’t need “Vascainos” like you”. The second – “You say you’re no longer Vasco as if an American had the legitimacy to say that, how ridiculous. A real Vascaino is born Vasco, you don’t become Vasco because you discovered Brazil.” The third – “in Brazil you can change your wife, your job, your state, etc. everything but the club. To love a club is to defend it to the death. I think you still have time to reconsider your position.” (Is this a threat?) The fourth, by a Botafogüense – “Really nice logic, the only people who can be Vasco were born in Brazil and who will die (and perhaps kill) for Vasco. With fans at this level it is better that you abandon this team.”

The lies and abuse that Vasco has spread around are made possible by the kinds of comments above. Love of the team, by this sick logic, allows the directors to do whatever they want, collect trophies and money at the cost of young lives. The culture of “undying love” that people are “born with” and that “others” “outsiders” “Americanos” [sic] have no legitimate claim to, no matter how profound and “real” their sentiments, places the team above reproach, allowing for the possibility of slaves to be used in the pursuit of three points or another star on the jersey. Questioning the team is to question one’s self, something that the Vascainos who commented above are not willing or able to do.

My position remains the same. This should be an international scandal especially in a country that is preparing to host the World Cup. The directors of Vasco should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. There should be a general investigation into Brazilian football training structures as we know that Vasco is not the only team that profits from unpaid labor in sub-human conditions. The CBF and FIFA will not take a position on this, unless pressured to do so.

The law of the land is one thing in Brazil, football is another. Until the two are brought together and these “true” Vascainos start to examine how much human blood they are willing to sacrifice for their club, the violence will continue.

The Center of the Universe

One of the nice things about living in the Center of the Universe is that there is a continual stream of VVIPs coming through town and sometimes they stop to chat. Such was the case yesterday when the Secretary General of FIFA, Jerome Valcke, took a few hours out of his busy schedule to do some much-needed PR with the international press corps.

FIFA, as we know, has had its share of really, really bad news lately. Corruption scandals emanate from this self-styled guardian of the global game as easily as no-bid contracts to Joseph Blatter’s family. Andrew Jennings is well on top of the legal proceedings against FIFA, recording his findings at www.transparencyinsport.com. In Brazil there is a strong and growing movement to get rid of Ricardo Teixeira, erstwhile president of the CBF and the 2014 Organizing Committee. This fight is being led by the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores e Torcedoras and can be accessed at www.torcedores.org.br.

Valcke is making the rounds of politicians and cities to get a few things done: 1) get the Law of the Cup passed. This has so far taken five years and will likely take a few more months to get through congress. In play are issues dealing with financial incentives, ticket prices for the elderly, students, indigenous, and the tens of millions of Brazilians who would like to see a World Cup game but can’t afford US$50 to do so. 2) Check on the progress of stadiums and infrastructure in the host cities. 3) Get some PR work done to polish the image of an institution that is under justifiable pressure to become more transparent and to leave more lasting benefits than the mere acceleration of brutalizing regimes of accumulation.  

Stadiums are massively over budget, but this should come as no surprise. Many of them will be white elephants. With maintenance costs typically running about 10% of initial construction, the public will pay for the Cup, again, in ten years.  But, you say, this is what the privatization schemes are for! So the public won’t have to assume the costs! Perhaps, but as with the public private partnerships that structure Rio de Janeiro’s transportation system, the companies are guaranteed profit and have no incentive to improve service, just to make more money. As we found out in Brasilia, the privatization of stadiums will depend on attracting shows, making the interior of the stadium a shopping mall, and charging astronomical sums to see mediocre football. As I talked about last week on Faixa Livre, Rio de Janeiro’s privatization contract for the Maracanã has just been published. Come on Eike Batista! I want you to determine how I experience professional football for the next 30 years!

The following is a semi-official table showing the vertiginous increase in construction costs for the 12 World Cup stadia that will then be handed over to private interests for profit and shopping center fun.

2010-11 Data taken from UOL online on 18.01.2010. 2009 data from various sources.

Costs in millions  of R$ (1.76 = 1USD)			Jan 2009	Jan 2010	Jan 2011
Itaquerão (SP)			NA	NA	890
Maracanã (RJ)			500	828	931
Arena Fonte Nova (BA)			400	592	597
Arena Amazônia (AM)			300	533	532,2
Arena Pantanal (MT)			342	597	597
Estádio Nacional (DF)			520	671	846
Estádio das Dunas (RN)			300	413	417
Castelão (CE)			300	452	518,6
Beira-Rio (RS)			378	154	290
Arena da Baixada (PR)			250	185	234
Arena Pernambuco (PE)			500	491	532
Mineirão (MG)			427	684	695

My questions to the Secretary General (I did not have a recorder, so quotes should not be taken as direct but as very accurate transcriptions from my notes):

CG: Mr. Valcke, given that the 2014 World Cup will be the most expensive in history…

JV (interrupting):  More expensive than Russia?

CG: Well Russia hasn’t happened yet.

JV(irritated): Neither has Brazil.

CG: Yes, but we already know the estimated costs of the Brazilian stadiums will be more than 7 billion Reales, and that the infrastructure projects will run tens of billions more. Given that this World Cup will be more expensive to host than all other World Cups combined, even though many of the construction costs are choices made by the cities and states, does FIFA also expect to make a record profit from the event?

JV (irritated): You are confusing one thing with another. FIFA is not responsible for the construction projects. We make suggestions but do not ask for specifics. [the Anexo 19: Football Stadiums Technical Recommendations and Requirements is 125 pages long. The bidding documents published here give insight into the lack of demands made by FIFA]

Brazil decides how many cities they want, Brazil decides what infrastructure projects they want to develop. The lack of facilities is Brazil’s reality, and has nothing to do with FIFA.

JV: FIFA is not a private organization; we are not in the business of making money. Decisions are made by the 208 members of the FIFA congress and all money is put back into the organization. We depend on the World Cup for 85 to 90 % of our operating budget for the next four years and with this money we run all of the other World Cups, give millions to the smaller federations who get 80% of all operating surplus…

I think we will make between US$3.3 and US$3.5 billion on the 2014 World Cup.

CG: What is FIFA doing to counter the perception that the World Cup, and in particular the stadiums, are being financed with public money and are targeting the interests of national and international business in one of the most unequal societies in the world?

JV:  Most of the companies that will receive our hospitality packages are Brazilian. We have 300,000 hospitality tickets that we use which is the same number of category 4 tickets that we have reserved for the Brazilian public, so it is not fair or accurate to say that we are privileging corporations over the people. We are also giving 100,000 tickets, for free, to low income Brazilians, indigenous people and others. Tickets that are reserved for corporations but are not used will be put on sale for the public. (end).

As I have explained before, no one is ultimately responsible for what happens with the World Cup. FIFA positions itself as a kind of victim that is trying to work within a slow and opaque governmental structure in order to carry off the tournament which they claim is their principal source of revenue for the following years. The cities and states are to be blamed for the mind-bogglingly stupid projects underway but should we really accept at face value the idea that FIFA just makes “suggestions”?

FIFA cannot be blamed for the murder of the Maracanã, but they’re also not complaining about the loss of culture, the forced evictions underway to make room for parking lots, or the destruction of a global icon . Nor will they be responsible in any way for the maintenance costs of the publically funded stadia that will be privatized for more than the length of the tournament in order to maximize the profits for the tournament to which they have exclusive commercial rights. Tudo bem, if Brazil wants the World Cup, they have to play by FIFA’s rules. But this is far from “Fair Play” as FIFA has very strategically created a monopoly condition for which we can point the finger at a few Brazilians.

Is it necessary to spend R$2 billion on World Cup security? Why should Brazil be held financially responsible for damages caused by natural disasters? Doesn’t FIFA have insurance for this? What ever happened to the relatively sane idea of regionalizing the World Cup ? Now, more than 50,000 people will have to travel to Cuiabá (or Manaus, or Natal) over a day or two in order to see, for example, England vs. Cote d’Ivoire in the first round. That’s a tenth of the city’s population. Can the airports handle that volume? Will foreigners be able to use their credit cards to purchase tickets on Brazilian websites? Will there be any English language signage to facilitate the flow of people that FIFA’s publically-financed event is generating?

As Valcke rightly pointed out, the World Cup cities will not be the same during the Cup. The opening concert in Rio is anticipated to draw between one and three million people to Copacabana. No one doubts that the Brazilians can pull the stadiums together in time. That was never the question. As in South Africa, the real issues are much more profound for the two most unequal countries in the G-20. 

FIFA is very clever in indentifying their responsibility frontiers, massaging the Cup into shape, making money for themselves and others, and then heading on to the next tournament. What gets left behind will become the full responsibility of the Brazilians who are now in the process of choosing their future.

Football Explaination 101

Dále Vasco. This week the absurdly translated Bullet-Train from the Hill (A Trem Bala da Colina) beat Palmeiras 2-0 in the Copa Sudamericana and 1-0 in the Brasileirão. I make no secret about being a Vascaino and those who aren’t can’t figure out why, those that are nod their head in knowing appreciation of a shared sentiment (que não pode parar). A few people have asked me what these different tournaments are and how they all fit together. I’ll use Vasco as an example.

In 2011, Vasco da Gama will play in 4 different competitions, some simultaneously: Campeonato Carioca (divided into the Taça Rio and the Taça Guanabara), Copa do Brasil (which they won), Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A, and Copa Sudamericana.

The Campeonato Carioca is a three division competition that is restricted to professional teams in Rio de Janeiro State. All of the other Brazilian states have similar competitions. Teams move between divisions through the globally recognized and recognizable system of relegation and promotion (top teams in lower divisions move up, lowest teams in all divisions move down or out). When Vasco won the second division in 1922, América, Fluminense, Flamengo, Botafogo, and Bangu, formed a separate league so that they would not be forced to share the field with players from lower social classes who were challenging the false notions of amateurism and social exclusion. Rio had a apartheid system in football from 1923 until full professionalism was instituted in1933.

The Copa do Brasil is a playoff system between 64 teams that qualify by either winning their state leagues, being in the CBF’s (Brazilian Football Federation) top ten ranked teams, or by riding a pack of botos between Manaus and Belém. Vasco won this year’s tournament which automatically qualifies them for the Copa Libertadores next year, more on that later.

The Campeonato Brasileiro, or Brasileirão, is a four division affair that extends across the length and breadth of this great land. Vasco are playing in the Serie A for the second consecutive year (2010, 2011) after competing in the Serie B in 2009 (for having finished in 18^th place in 2008). Ironically, the trauma of going to SErie B might have been one of the best possible things for Vasco as they were able to get some of the dead wood from the previous administration out of the front office and the Rio fans, whatever their faults might be, certainly come to the aid of their team when they’re struggling. Vasco had the highest attendances of any team in Brazil in 2009.

Vasco is also in the Copa Sudamericana, and were randomly pitted against Palmeiras twice in the same week. Once for the Copa, once for the Brasileirão. The Copa Sudamerica is open to almost every team in the top flight of Brasilian footy. A top 14 finish qualifies. The bottom four drop out of the league so there are only two teams in the first division that don’t qualify for extra pay days with TRAFFIC Sports (who own the transmission rights to all South American continental matches). Why have less footy when you can just make up a reason for teams to fly all over the place to play 10pm Wed night games? Similar to the newfangled Europa League and the oldfangled UEFA Cup, no one really takes this Cup seriously until the semi-finals.

The 2012 Copa Libertadores beckons, and this is a much more serious matter. Like the UEFA Champions League this features the top teams from all the domestic leagues in CONMEBOL who play two round robin rounds before moving to a home and away knock out round where away goals count more than goals scored at home. That is to say that if Vasco were to play LDU to a 2-2 draw in Quito and also drew 1-1 at the São Januário, they would progress to the next round by virtue of more away goals scored. If they lost 3-1 away and won 2-0 at home, they would also go through. Got it?

The winner of the Copa Libertadores in 2010, Santos F.C., will dispute the World Club Championship with the other winners of the confederation tournaments. Usually this is a showdown between the European champion (Barcelona) and the South American. However, much to the delight of Gremistas, in 2010 Inter Milan won after beating Congo’s TP Mazembe who had shocked Internacional of Porto Alegre in the semi-final.

That more or less takes care of the club competitions. This scenario repeats itself around the world with variations here and there. In the USA, for instance, there is no system of promotion and relegation. This, in part, owes itself to an antiquated exception in the anit-trust laws that gives monopoly power to the “Major Leagues”, who are able to set significant barriers to entry in to their relatively closed circuits of capital circulation. In Argentina, when a major team gets relegated, they change the entire league structure. As the bosteros of San Lorenzo put it to River: cambiaran a las reglas cuando ibas a la B, la platea te regaló un teniente-coronel, vos sos asi, vos sos gallina, junto com Boca sos la mierda de Argentina!

World Cup FAIL

What is it about Rio de Janeiro that makes everything just a little more complicated than it has to be?  Is it possible that Jared Diamond’s environmental determinism has some merit? Why aren’t the football fans in this city totally revolted by what is going on?

O Maraca já era. Foto Raul Melo Neto.

The BIG NEWS coming out of the TCU (Federal Accounting Authority) is that the Novo Maracanã project is being carried off in R$1.5 billion illegal and opaque ways. There’s no surprise but to hear the same thing that I have been saying come from the very government that is financing the project is both refreshing and sad, as there is basically nothing that can be done about it. Why? Because the TCU has no power to initiate legal proceedings. Those must be taken up by the Ministério Público (Public Prosecutor). There, a very ambitious, brave, or stupid lawyer would have to get permission from her higher ups to initiate legal proceedings against the government officials in charge of the project. There is simply never going to be enough political cover for a lawsuit to be brought to bear, so while the TCU can make recommendations and use strong language, it’s very unlikely that the jeitinho is going to change. 

Let’s look at some of the details of the TCU’s report culled from a dozen different news sources (I have not yet been able to find Valmir Campelo’s relatório on the Byzantine TCU webpage, any help appreciated).

The report was firm in declaring that the Maracanã  contract process was completely opaque and that the budget “borders on complete fiction”. The TCU highlighted the fact that while the Minerão project in Belo Horizonte presented 1309 architectural drawings and the Verdão project in Cuiabá presented 702, the Maracanã presented 37. Thirty-seven drawings for a R$709 million project!?#!@$%!?  Fala sério. In the budget for the Maracanã, “multiple items are included multiple times, there are innumerable opportunities for inflationary costs to be written in, and items included in the engineering budget have nothing to do with engineering.” Pah! Ha ha ha! Tão de brincadeira?

This is what one gets when you take the same people that managed a 1000% cost overrun for the Pan American Games, give them more power, more money, less public accountability, and fewer transparency mechanisms. The TCU, which condemned Ricardo Leyser (head of the Pan construction projects and now head of the Empresa Brasil 2016, responsible for using R$30 billion [the initial Olympic budget, sure to double] to transform Rio de Janeiro forever), noted in their report that there is a risk of “added contractual costs, over-charging, un-necessary projects, and emergency contracting procedures that will follow in the pattern of the Pan 2007.” The report cites the case of the Nova Fonte Nova in Salvador, whose price went from R$ 400 million in 2009, to R$ 591 million in 2010, to an estimated R$ 1.6 billion in 2011. Tão de sacanagem, sim.

The TCU also confirms my suspicions about Orlando Silva’s renewed position within the Ministry of Sport saying,  “there are indications of a possible lack of accompaniment on the part of the Minister, a characteristic that will make controlling the projects more difficult.” Initially, Silva was nominated as a potential head for the APO (Public Olympic Authority, which will employ Leyser’s BRASIL 2016) but after some negotiation he remained in his post as MoS because the powers behind the powers know they can count on him to turn a blind eye to the proceedings.  

What the TCU report does, in addition to bringing to light what everyone has known all along, is warn the cities that they may actually be held accountable for what they are or are not doing. The very same TCU minister that produced this most recent report warned that Fortaleza is in serious danger of having their World Cup Host status revoked. The main issue cited is the forced removal of communities that are “in the way” of transportation lines designed to bring tourists from the beach to the stadium. As I have mentioned in other posts, the Fortaleza project is more about massive real-estate projects than anything else, as a massive residential complex is in the works right next to the suburban stadium. FIFA only ever asked for 8-10 cities, so there is a real possibility that one or two cities are going to fall off the World Cup map.

So what is going to happen now? The TCU has asked that BNDES, the Brazilian National Development Bank, suspend 80% of the financing for the Maracanã until SEMOP (Municipal Works Secretary), SUDERJ (State Sports Secretary), and Rio 2014 (the consortium of Rio’s big boy construction firms) can find a way to make their jogo-do-bicho a little more palatable to government authorities. BNDES has opened R$ 400 million in financing for all of the World Cup cities, a massive stimulus for the funneling of public money to private interests.

In the meantime, nearly all of the games of the Campeonato Carioca are being played at the Engenhão. Indeed, all of Rio’s teams are going to be playing their big matches in Engenho de Dentro until 2016. Once the Novo Maracanã  is finished, sometime towards the end of 2013, it will be used sporadically for clássicos in order to test new security systems and general functioning in the months leading up to the World Cup. After the World Cup, the stadium will undoubtedly suffer more investments in preparation for the 2015 Copa América and 2016 Olympics. Then, when Rio’s real-estate bubble bursts and the only people who can afford tickets to the Novo Maracanã are jumping off of their coberturas, who will go to the games? Not that the teams really want fans to go anyway as only 8% of their income results from ticket sales. (Last year, Flamengo offered tickets for R$10, filling the Fechadão and recording their highest receipts of the year, yet the club said that this was not a viable economic model because, “it’s complicated”) .

In other fun news that I culled from the TCU webpage, two of the major infrastructure works being planned for the World Cup have been paralyzed for lack of transparency in theitr contracting process. Rio Metrô has had their Linha 3 project stopped and São Paulo’s Garulhos (international) Airport has been halted. Here are the links: https://contas.tcu.gov.br/pls/apex/f?p=2207:4:4926169036331711::NO::P4_COD_OBRA:611

 https://contas.tcu.gov.br/pls/apex/f?p=2207:4:4926169036331711::NO::P4_COD_OBRA:913

Brazilian Democracy in Action

Sunday was election day. There were no football matches, no selling of alcohol for most of the day, and absolutely no controversy about counting the electronically submitted votes. More than 135 million Brazilians voted. The lower house of the federal government will have representatives from 22 different parties, the senate 15 parties. In Brazil, you have the option to vote for no one. Brilliant. Incredibly, there were many dozens of candidates for federal deputy in the state of Rio that didn't even vote for themselves. Their spouses didn't vote for them, their children didn't vote for them. 0 votes! That's as many as I had! From São Paulo, the USAmerican equivalent of Howdy Doody is going to Brasilia where he will be part of a governing body that includes Brazil's 1994 World Cup wining forwards, Bebeto and Romario. The green party presidential candidate, Marina Silva, managed 20% of the vote, forcing a run off between Coke and Pepsi, or if you prefer, Brahma and Skol. There will be no surprises from here on as Lula has fluffed the pillow of his cult of personality enough to ensre that Dilma will have a comfy place to lay her Gorgon-like head.

In so far as any of this has to do with the general trajectory of my reporting, nothing much changed on Sunday, but there were some small victories. Eurico Miranda, the man who stole millions from Vasco da Gama and put the team into financial ruin and the second division, did not get elected. His successor, Roberto Dinamite (a former national team player and Vasco idol), did - though I'm not sure if that is good news or just of passing interest. Rio's former mayor, Cesar Maia, only won 11% in his bid for the Senate. Now that we're all on the way to a system of urban, environmental, and social governance that thinks of return on investment first and fufilling social contracts tenth, Maia's neo-liberal interventions are no longer needed anyway. Maybe Rio 2016 will hire him to do something.

One of the people I discuss in Temples of the Earthbound Gods,  Chiquinho da Mangueira, the former head of SUDERJ, got himself elected as a state deputy just ahead of Dinamite.  Chiquino abused the image of the Maracanã in his electoral campaign more than any candidate EVER. You'd think he'd built the place himself not presided over the distrouous 2005-2007 reforms.

Did any candidate for any office at any level of government at any time during the campaign season make any comments criticizing the current craze of coughing up currency for constructing colossal and short lived mega-events? Possibly. Unlikely.

Does the voting system work in Brazil? Yes.

Is voting part of participatory democracy? Yes.

Is is sufficient? No.

I had an accidental lunch with a taxi driver today. As he sat down, he commented that the restaurant was without water. He was irate because the owner of the restaurant was so blithe about the situation. The whole neighborhood was without water, e dai? Did anyone complain? Mabye. Was there anyone listening if they did? Probably not. The taxi driver then explained how much he had to pay in taxes to drive his taxi. It was such an absurd number that I shot a black bean from my mouth into my nasal passage. Then he told me how much the flanelinhas were charging to park in Niteroi: R$20. (Fanelinhas are guys who stand on the street and "help" you park.) If you don't pay what they want, you come back and your windows are broken or your tires slashed. Lovely. R$20 is no joke to park on a street that should be free, or have a meter or have some kind of regulated system. Does anyone complain? Yes. Does the problem get addressed? Yes. In the Zona Sul of Rio. Sometimes. He told me he was with a judge one day who never paid the flanelinha, he simply parked and walked away. If something happened, he called some cops on the phone and had them arrest all of the flanelinhas in sight. It's good to be the king.

The point of all this? Democracy is not and should not be limited to the act of voting. Brazilians pay insanely high taxes for the insanely shoddy delivery of public services. The World Cup and Olympics are inherently anti-democratic events, run by anti-democratic institutions, supported by democratically elected individuals, and financed with public money, lots of it. These events and people and institutions are combining to worsen the conditions of Brazilian democracy. There is already a general sense of helplessness in the face of an impossibly complex bureaucracy that simply does not deliver what it should given the amount of money shoveled into it. When FIFA and the IOC come to town, abre a boca Galvão.

At the same time, the voting machines work. There are dozens of political parties. Political discourse is not driven by hatred of immigrants or religious groups or about which party is going to fortify the border with 15,000 or 45,000 more troops. 135 million votes in a country of 190 million is impressive, even though it's a legal requirement. People discuss their political ideas openly in the streets and aren't afraid to have friends with different political views. As with democracy, as with flamenguistas, ninguém perfeito.

Looking back, looking forward, going nowhere

The 2010 World Cup is history. Spain were deserving winners over a preternaturally violent Dutch side that should have been sent to Robben Island for a week of rock breaking. The juxtaposition of the villainous anti-football of Van Bommel and De Jong to the heroic jogo bonito of Xavi and Iniesta gave Spain well-deserved moral and sporting triumphs.

By most popular accounts, the 2010 tournament was a success: relatively safe streets, beautiful stadiums, decent organization, and incredible hospitality on the part of South Africans. FIFA agrees: the South Africans really were wonderful hosts, spending public money freely so that the Swiss-based monolith could rake in a record profit. It won’t take long for FIFA to count their US$3.3 billion in revenues (for the month); it will take South Africa many decades to pay off the party. The tourists have gone; the hotels, stadiums, airports, communications facilities, transportation lines, cultural attractions, and debt remain.

In order to make sense of what has happened in South Africa one has to get rid of the idea of the 2010 World Cup as a month long football tournament. A mega-event is not an “event” but a multi-year process that has residual effects that most people can’t, don’t want to, or refuse to acknowledge. In reading the responses to a recent article that draws attention to Brazil’s poor state of preparedness for the 2014 World Cup, one is struck by the degree of ignorance, short-sightedness, and willful disregard about the way the World Cup functions in the local context. While we distract ourselves about notions of “Fair Play” and contribution to cultures of deceit (i.e. the Suarez handball against Ghana), the dirtiest, cheating-est, most dishonest game is in the very production of the World Cup itself – where the laws that govern society are changed, violated, and ignored so that “we” can consume the inherent drama of sport in safety and comfort.

     1)   FIFA is a corrupt institution of organized criminals that bullies national and local governments into financing a private party. FIFA is very explicit about the private nature of the event. Everything within an x-kilometer radius of a World Cup stadium is FIFA’s private domain: a sanitized and securitized world of private accumulation where only certain signs, symbols, and behaviors are permitted. Worse, this FIFA-world is controlled by public and private security forces that act to ensure the smooth production of a global spectacle.

     2)     The Local Organizing Committee (LOC) has little or no public accountability even though they receive and direct all public funding for the event. This closed organization is neither elected nor subject to public regulatory agencies. In South Africa, one of the 23 SA2010 LOC  members was shot dead outside his home on his way to a whistle-blowing deposition. Once the event is over the LOC will dissolve, forever eliminating the possibility of legal action or public accountability.

   

      Brazil 2014 is a story of corruption foretold. The Brazilian LOC only has 6 members. For the first time in the history of the event the head of the national football federation (Ricardo Teixeira) will head the LOC. His daughter is the Secretary-general. Her grandfather is João Havelange, president of FIFA from 1974-1998. 

     3) Transportation infrastructures are constructed with only short term mobility and use in mind. FIFA does not employ urban planners. A LOC does not hold public meetings. In Johannesburg, for example, the construction of BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) lines linking the tourist zones with the stadium had two effects. One, it eliminated employment for thousands of informal and formal transportation providers, who later opened fire on the BRT. Secondly, the BRT will be almost completely unused after the World Cup, draining public coffers to maintain the linkages between the five star hotels and the Ellis Park Coca Cola Park Stadium (itself a totally unnecessary construction).

In Rio de Janeiro, the construction of BRTs linking the Zona Sul and the International Airport with the Olympic Zone in Barra de Tijuca is underway. There is also much talk of a bullet train linking Campinas-São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro (at a cost of R$45 billion). Presently, there is no passenger train service at all! Fala serio.

     4)   Most World Cup stadiums are isolated from the urban and cultural contexts, have no programmed post-cup use, and are very expensive to maintain. The anticipated maintenance costs for Soccer City are R1.5 million per month. That is R18 million a year (US$2.5 million) just to keep the thing standing. The average attendance at South African football games in 2009 was around 8,000. Who will pay to keep these stadiums standing?

In Brazil, the idea is that ticket prices are going to increase from an average of R$20 in 2010 to R$60 in 2014. This is seen as part of a necessary and inevitable process of “elitization” of Brazilian stadiums. There are no plans for multi-use stadiums. There are no plans to integrate stadiums into the urban fabric (partially as a result of FIFA’s requirement that there be one parking space for every 6 spectators which creates dead space around the stadiums). There are, in short, no plans that will make the stadiums anything but a perpetual drain on the public coffers.

     5)     While there are short –term employment benefits and increases in civil engineering projects (with corollary booms in commodities like concrete and steel), there is no evidence that mega-events bring economic benefits. While there is a boom in construction jobs, the haste to build the South African stadiums resulted in labor law violations, forceful strike breaking,  and the civil engineering companies responsible for the projects (at least in the South African case) brought in their skilled labor from abroad. Stadiums bring no medium to long-term economic gain anywhere in the world, much less in a country with 20% unemployment.

     6)     The restructuring of urban space and culture for tourism creates a dependency on a tourist economy. The current debt crisis in Greece can be traced, in part, to the massive borrowing for the Olympics plus the global financial meltdown that killed the tourist economy. This begs the question about why public funds are directed to hosting international tourists instead of providing basic necessities for the national population. 2010 World Cup spending equaled what is spent on public housing over a decade. Will more tourists arrive in South Africa? Maybe. Would they have arrived without the World Cup? Maybe. Will the South African housing and public health crises continue? Definitely.   

     7)     The way in which the world outside of the World Cup stadiums perceives and experiences the World Cup has become completely homogenized and controlled by the FIFA production crew. Everyone sees the same thing at more or less the same time in more or less the same way. From replays, to close-ups, to wide angle shots, FIFA controls the narrative. Granted, this narrative is delivered in HD with 36 cameras and super slo-mo, etc, etc, but what is presented to the world as reality is a simulacra of what is happening in the stadiums: an incomplete and fragmented narrative of events that only gives us limited insight into reality.

     8)      It is not only tele-spectators, but also live spectators that are crushed into a hegemonic, homogenous box. FIFA’s stadiums are basically the same. They all have to follow the same “manual”, meet the same “requirements”.  The worst example that comes to mind is the Maracanã. The architectural project submitted to FIFA in March was not approved because the architects did not take into account that the advertizing boards that surround the field for a FIFA World Cup (and occupy our field of vision for the 128 hours of football) are 30cm higher than those commonly used in Brazil. Therefore, the slope of the lower tier of stands had to be readjusted, which necessitated the complete revamping of the stadium project.

     9)     Is there any doubt that mega-events widen the gap between rich and poor? The South African government pail hundreds of millions in advertising to attract people, and then paid hundreds of millions more to control them once they arrived. The South African debt from the World Cup is roughly equivalent to FIFA profit.

    10)   If there is so much money to be spent on public works projects, why not do it anyway? (The event tends to unify coalitions that are usually at odds). By building on a massive scale for a month-long event, governments opt for a strategy of maximizing capital accumulation in the shortest possible time frame. That the public will continue to pay the bills for decades to come is not of much interest to the political power de jure as they will be remembered more for the successful hosting of the event than for the unfulfilled promises of economic and social development.

    11)   This table reflects the current state of the stadium projects for the 2014 World Cup. One year ago, the estimated cost for all of the stadiums was R$ 4,411,000,000. This has jumped by 31.6% - without actually building anything! Stadiums in Cuiaba and Manaus have begun to be demolished, but none of the remaining ten projects have begun.

Cidade-sede      Construção        R$xMilhões        Gestão       Atual (13.7.10)

Belo Horizonte	renovação	657,4	pub/ppp?	não contratada
Brasilia	demolição	702	publico	edital publicada
Cuiaba	demolição	342	publico	contratada
Curitiba	renovação	200	privado	Em duvida
Fortaleza	novo	452	publico	na justiça
Manaus	demolição	499,5	publico	contratada
Natal	novo	400	publico	Licitação pendente
Porto Alegre	renovação	150	privado	procurando dinheiro
Recife	novo	464	ppp	contratada
Rio de Janeiro	renovação	720	publico	não tem licitação
Salvador	demolição	591,7	publico	Contratada ; suspensa
São Paulo	renovação	630	publico	Fora
		5808,6

São Paulo has no stadium project, as the Morumbi has been excluded. Rio de Janeiro has not yet published the Novo Maracanã project (to which we should add the R$430 million in reforms undertaken for the 2007 Pan American Games). Several other projects are held up in the courts. And…the national government just passed a law that will make it more, not less, difficult to track how public money is spent for the World Cup and Olympics.

    12) Mega-events as a model of social and economic development are inherently flawed. These events are promoted by local and national economic and political elites who erect autonomous agencies to direct billions from the public coffers. The restructuring of urban space for capital accumulation is exacerbated by the use of public and private security forces to ensure its unimpeded flow into the hands of multi-national corporations and international sport governing agencies. Once the “event” has passed, there is no public accountability, frequently nothing left in terms of a “legacy”, and massive sporting, transportation and tourist infrastructures that have little to no local context but need to be maintained with even more public money.

    13)  Is a mega-event completely horrible? No. Was the World Cup an unmitigated disaster? No. I nearly died from emotional overload on a number of occasions. Does a mega-event bring intangible benefits to the hosts? Yes. A mega-event is a global party during which a host city or nation is able to welcome the world. The emotions and drama of global sport are captivating and important and form part of our collective human consciousness (especially post-WWII). However, the form, function, processes, and lasting effects of the World Cup and Olympics are, on balance, terrible, nefarious, and destructive. The World Cup and Olympics need to be massively reconfigured, re-scaled, and re-thought, or they will continue to destroy environments, economies, communities, and lives around the globe.