Brazil will be ready for 2014 World Cup, promises top official

By Andrew Warshaw in Doha

November 13 – The operations director for the 2014 World Cup insists the country will be ready on time despite constant concerns expressed by both Sepp Blatter and his FIFA number two, Jerome Valcke.

Ricardo Trade (pictured) attempted to make light of Brazil’s problems when he spoke at the Aspire4Sport conference here which has featured Brazil’s failings almost as much as Qatar’s 2022 aspirations over the first couple of days.

Blatter said earlier this year that Brazil were further behind in preparations than South Africa had been at the same stage ahead of the 2010 tournament. Valcke, meanwhile, has made several trouble-shooting trips to Brazil of late, warning the government only last week that the country was running out of time.

But Trade, whose boss is Brazil’s scandal-tarnished organising chief Ricardo Teixeira, gave the impression everything was running smoothy.

“I am very confident about the discussions we are having with Mr Blatter and Mr Valcke and we also have a board meeting with them every two and a half months,” he said.

“We are not behind on stadia and airports and both of them know this.

“We are behind in putting the guarantees into law – which was why Mr Valcke was there – and some infrastructure but we have time in both cases and on this we are very comfortable.”

Trade was one of those responsible for scrapping the idea of teams playing in clusters, instead opting for pushing finalists around the country to different venues.

“We decided with FIFA to use all the country,” he said, not altogether convincingly.

“Also, for tourism, because all the cities receive a lot of matches and a lot of seeded teams will be divided throughout our country.

“We prepared a match schedule which is very comfortable because we have long distances and some weather differences so, at least, if a team play games which are a long distance away they will have at least four days to rest and become acclimatised.”

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