What happens when the Cup of Cups runneth over?

The Cup of Cups is limited to the field of play and even then there are massive problems with the governance of the game. We see innumerable possibilities of concussed players staying on the field after getting dinged. There is no doping lab in Brazil capable of analyzing anything but belly button lint and FIFA is threatening to sanction the Mexican fans for saying “Puto” while tens of thousands of Brazilians call Diego Costa a “viado” with impunity. While we have seen amazing football, been on emotional roller coasters and exposed to the furious athleticism of the male body as consumer spectacle (thank you Puma) this continues to come at a heavy cost.

Scalpers, ticket touts and cambistas who are operating freely around the Maracanã are exploiting the desperation of fans to get into matches. Outside the Spain x Chile match a dodgy looking Englishman tried to get US$ 2500 for three tickets. That is maddeningly expensive and exploitative and theoretically illegal. There were dozens of these transactions happening on a newly constructed overpass that linked the stadium to the hospitality center on the other side of the tracks.  The hastily constructed overpasses and lack of organization may eventually create some nasty problems. Combine this with a military police that is not there to help but to hit, and there is an explosive combination waiting for the fuse to be lit.

Continuing north from the Maracanã and into the Manguinhos favela, at the same time that tiki-taka was dying, the Military Police assassinated Jonathan, a 19 year old, by shooting him in the back. As geographer Carolyn Prouse has pointed out on her blog, the protests that occur far from the eyes of the national and international media are not necessarily against the World Cup but for basic human rights: “There is less circling of the cops with cameras when people are running for their lives. And because favelas are typically depicted as being run by drug traffickers, it is very easy for the state and the media to accuse protestors of being paid by the traffickers, as ridiculous a claim as it may be. This is a form of criminalization of protest activity that rarely sees any media coverage in World Cup reports. And it’s done to silence activists.”

In short, the military model of dealing with insurgent populations has been amplified with the World Cup. While the ostensive policing of areas around the stadiums may be a normal aspect of football culture in Brazil that does not mean that it is acceptable. The cordons sanitaires that are part of the fan experience have their inverse in the cordons du terroire of a repressive police apparatus.

If we think of the stadium as a city in miniature then by looking at what is going on there we can better understand the dynamics of the city. If fans are renting their spaces in the stadium, and those prices are too high for them to pay, then they look for a cheaper seat (in a bar), spend their savings or try to invade. If ticket prices are comparable to housing costs, we see the same thing happening in the mega-event city. The middle and lower classes can no longer afford to live near places of work and leisure, get pushed to the periphery and are forced to cede space to the international tourist class (however defined). Those who try to invade (squat) are treated as criminals and expelled from their occupations. In this sense the deportation of the Chileans who tried to squat  in the Maracanã is the equivalent of the violent repression that Cariocas have faced when they try to occupy vacant buildings. 

The invasions of the Maracanã undertaken by the Argentines and Chileans during the first two games are getting all of the media attention and the security will be reinforced in all stadia. However, this does not go beyond a mere re-entrenchment of the hyper-territorialization of FIFA-space. The continuation of this process by more repressive means is happening throughout the World Cup host cities.

The Bull Dies

Watching Spain in this World Cup was like going to a bullfight without knowing that the bull always dies. Early 21st century Spanish football revolutionized the game in the most functional sense of the word, moving the game forward into an unexplored dimension. Before opposing tactical systems were designed to cope with and in that dimension, the elegant, lethal force of the bull was irresistible. But once Spain had won everything several times over, their competitive edge was blunted even further by age and the counter-revolution (conjured, perhaps, by the dark arts of Mourinho). This is not to say football has regressed, but the Spanish revolution in football is now in the dustbin of history. This was as inevitable as it was retroactively predictable.

As many other more qualified commentators have noted, the continual evolution of football tactics is accompanied by an across the globe leap in technical quality (just look at all the freestylers out there) and a quantitative surge in player fitness. The spatial science of player positioning and movement must combine with the potential for long term energy output, resilience to physiological damage and intense psychological conditioning. It seems nearly impossible for a side to manage this combination for seven games, yet one team will have to do just that.  

This raises the inevitable question of what is going to happen in the Holland  x Chile match that will decide who goes through to meet Brazil in the round of 16. With both on six points a draw will put Holland top on goal differential. If Chile can put together another performance like today´s they might very well win but could have nothing in the tank for Croatia or Mexico. If they rest and play for a draw, or not be too upset by losing, there is Brazil to play. I don´t know if this is Occam´s Razor, a Nicomachean conundrum, or a Nerudian sonnet.

This is the first World Cup in Latin America since 1986. That is a long time ago. International travel has expanded dramatically and the middle classes have grown. There were at least 70,000 Argentines in Rio for their match against Bosnia. Dozens of them jumped over the walls of the Maracanã. Some of the 40,000 Chileans did the same thing tonight. South of the Rio Bravo del Norte, we are used to this kind of thing and the police reaction it brings. When I see the excessive amount of military police lining the approaches to the Maracanã, it doesn´t seem that out of place because that is how every game is. It´s absurd but normal.

What isn´t normal is the kind of atmosphere that has been produced inside and outside the stadiums.

In the Maracanã, Minerão, Castelão, Verdão, etc, of old there was no clock just a crappy scoreboard with broken lightbulbs. Everyone knew to look at their watches or listen to the radio or ask someone with either one. Many of the best known, most loved stadiums in Latin America are minimalist structures designed to hold tens of thousands of people for two hours as they jump up and down, light fireworks and tumble over each other. Sure, they may not be the most comfortable places but they are actual places. Stands are for standing, if they weren´t they would be called something else. The new stadiums are more comfortable, but they are non-places.

After the Spain Chile match, I walked over and sat in the same place that I sat when the last game was played at the old Maracanã. In 2010, the lights went off within 30 minutes after the game and the cleaning crew came in. There was a profound, rattling silence. There was no television screen and no security guards came by to move me along.

After the game tonight I was assaulted by piercingly loud advertisements. The televisions screamed “BUY THIS SHIT NOW!” while Chileans tried to celebrate their historic moment. The sound was so deafening that it made me want to leave as soon as possible. I resisted. Twenty minutes later, most of the fans had left and the advertisements stopped. In their place some decent Brazilian music wafted about as the stewards kept angry eyes on the partying Chileans and the all-black cleaning crews readied their brooms.

On the way out, the Chileans were in good voice and I sat to give an interview on a metal bench at the Coca-Cola stand. Describing the scene around me was pretty sad as I saw no beer vendors, nowhere for people to congregate and thousands of police. Looking past an Itaú bank stand where I could have gotten instant credit, my eye was caught by a fancy new Hyundai, the official FIFA fan shop and a Johnson and Johnson stand which advertised a “Caring Stadium”.

All of this global corporatism was placed directly in front of the Museu do Indio, Brazil´s oldest indigenous museum. The indigenous community that occupied the building between 2006 and 2013 was violently removed to prepare the city for the World Cup. The justification was that the building would have to be destroyed so that fans could more easily exit the stadium. Now, fans have to walk through an obstacle course where Fuleco and Brazuca block the path to the metro. Expelled from the stadium, we are ushered into a sanitized zone of corporate feudalism where the violence of dispossession is hidden behind the shields of riot police and dulled by the happy buzz of a spectacle well-consumed.  This is what is out of place at the Brazilian World Cup.

Discursive framing and other one-offs

There are few media conglomerates that wield the kind of influence over society, culture and popular perception as the Globo Network in Brazil. This is particularly true in the media-government-business nexus of the World Cup. Globo is the de-facto owner of Brazilian football, paid dearly for the rights to transmit the 2014 World Cup (though no one knows how much) and is shaping the discourse around the tournament to suit the needs of those who seek to maintain their grip on power, namely the Globo network itself. 

One of the biggest advertisers in the Globo newspaper is the state government. Their contributions are rivalled by the big civil construction firms whose subsidiaries in the closed-condominium housing industry take out full page ads everyday to extoll the virtues of living in stylized off-worlds with names like Miami Gardens, Pure Island, or Reserva Golfe. The condo ads are inevitably flanked by car and truck ads, extolling the virtues of escape into the wilderness, or alternatively, into a morass of congestion. As ever, Rio de Janeiro is the most beautiful city in the world to be stuck in traffic. This is not a counter-cultural moment in Brazil. People are pulling their hair out, not letting it flow naturally to prove a point. Brazil is in the midst of an ideological project driven by elites in government, media and industry that want Brazilians to charge full speed ahead into a debt-ridden world of consumerism, hostility towards the public sphere and fear of the underclasses.

One of the most perverse ways in which Globo tries to twist the realities of fantastically unequal wealth distribution, militarization, privatization and commodification into a Hallmark moment of Brazil´s arrival on the international stage is in their presentation of the Maracanã. As we know, the Maracanã was ripped from public hands with some violence over the past few years. One of the particularly charming displays was the removal of the Aldeia Maracanã indigenous community with shock troops. The ever-mindful president of the state agency responsible for the Maracanã complex said at the time, “the place for Indians is in the forest, that´s why we´re preserving the Amazon.” This is what it looked like:

Warning: do not eat while looking at this photo. 

Now, according to Globo, this is what the Aldeia Maracanã has become.

In the article, we are informed that weddings can now be held in the stadium for a rent as low as R$30,000. The new Aldeia Maracanã according to Globo, has no indigenous, no poor, not even the middle class. This Aldeia is only for those who can afford it. 

They´re cute while young, best to declaw in early adolescence.

To prove the point, this is the way that the ideologues at Globo are presenting Brazilian´s indigenous communities as the World Cup approaches.

The title here should be, “Brasil, através da bala.” If you are indigenous, you had better be young, because as soon as you start to demand rights or dare to appear in places where you don´t “belong” then likelihood of extirpation by FBI-trained shock troops is pretty good.

While the criminal and unconstitutional treatment of the indigenous communities across Brazil gets almost no play in the media, it is important to remember that the oldest center of indigenous culture in Brazil has been forcibly removed for the realization of the World Cup. In its place we have a sterile urban environment that tens of thousands will pass by without noticing on their way to drink Budweiser and eat McDonalds inside of the privatized, sanitized and hollow (not hallowed) Maracanã.

30 Daze

With one month to go until kickoff all the talk is about infrastructure projects delivered or not delivered, costs, stadiums, legacy, protests, who will win, etc. There are a few talking points being left out of the debate.

Which projects are (not) being completed and why?

More than half of the WC infrastructure projects that were part of the Matrix of Responsibilities that each city signed as part of the “host-city agreement” with FIFA have not happened. This includes a monorail in Manaus, a light rail in Cuiabá, the 1.5 km extension of the metro in Salvador, reforms to Rio´s port, airport projects, 4G communications and numerous Bus Rapid Transit lines. There are two things to consider: a) why were these projects chosen, by whom and how and b) why didn´t they get done and what are the consequences?

In the case of Rio, a major bus line that was projected in the 1960s was finally brought into being. It connects the international airport with Barra da Tijuca in the southwest part of the city. It cuts through dense neighborhood fabric, has removed tens of thousands of people and will not attend the tourist or commuter demands of the city. Why a bus line from the 1960s to a distant suburb where no residents use public transportation? Why not an expansion of the metro to the international airport? Why not new ferry lines? In short, the lingering questions about “legacy” are going to be answered in a few years, as Jerome Valcke recently said. The implication is that Brazilians shouldn´t protest now because we don´t know how things are going to turn out. Already, the evidence points to a legacy fail of historic proportions.

But if we take Valcke´s advice and wait to see what happens, surely we can look at what has happened with the projects that have been delivered.

The projects that have been delivered, such as stadiums, have not functioned to attract “families back to football”, as the event organizers have suggested. FIFA suggests that these “better facilities” will “welcome more fans, because the structure is nicer and have a higher standard of international football.” Please.

The quality of the Brazilian league may be at its lowest point in fifty years. The data show that attendances are lower and ticket prices higher than all of the major football leagues in the world. Indeed, Brazil has the highest ticket prices in the world relative to minimum wage. The new stadiums have been privatized and the teams prefer to have fewer, wealthier fans in the stadium. Why? For every fan, the teams pay insurance and security costs. Therefore 10,000 fans at R$50 generates more money than 20,000 at R$25. 

Year	Total Public	Average  Public		Total gate receipts (R$)	Average ticket price (R$)
2007	6,582,976	17,461	80,040,848		12.2
2008	6,439,854	16,992	101,241,490		15.7
2009	6,766,471	17,807	125,764,391		18.6
2010	5,638,806	14,839	112,873,893		20.0
2011	5,660,987	14,976	117,665,714		20.8
2012	4,928,827	12,970	119,100,000		22.92
2013	5,681,355	14,951	176,500,000		31.06

Data taken from the CBF website and compiled by me.

If we take out the novelty of visiting new stadiums, and the fact that the big teams are playing outside of their home cities and attracting bigger crowds through novelty, the 2013 Brasilierão would have been worse than the numbers here show. If we take into account items such as transportation, food and parking then average costs are much higher. In short, the promise that families would flock back to the stadiums because of increased comfort and security did not and will not materialize as long as the level of play is so bad and the prices are so exorbitant.

Yesterday, I returned to the Favela do Metrô-Mangueira. The city has removed the majority of the favela to make way for undefined and uncompleted projects. We were warned of all the cracudos lingering in the trash and sewage filled alleyways.  The scene was one of utter destruction and desperation.

Passing by the Maracanã metrô station, I was astounded to see that a huge construction project had gotten underway in the three weeks since I had last been there. It seems impossible that the integration of the train and metro stations will happen in a month.

Inside the Maracanã, the press handlers were frantically trying to keep us from touching the grass at the edge of the technical area. “Only players” was the mantra, as security guards stomped around the edge of the pitch. The gaggle of neurotic pr flacks was desperately trying to create some kind of religious iconography out of a patch of grass in a historic place that has been sanitized and deracinated. Not 500 meters from that very spot, people are struggling for their lives amidst scenes of destruction and ruin.

One month from the Cup, the questions should be about infrastructure and preparedness, but we must first consider what has Brazil (not) prepared, how and for whom.