By Andrew Warshaw in Sao Paulo
June 12 – World Cup, what World Cup? Usually on the eve of the biggest sporting spectacle on the planet, colourful bunting is everywhere to be seen, flags fly proudly, there are welcoming smiles and horns blast away patriotically.
The only horns that have been blasting in Sao Paulo, where hosts Brazil open up the tournament against Croatia on Thursday, have been as a result of frustration and impatience at the traffic snarl-ups that seems to be de rigueur in this giant sprawling, choking urban metropolis.
And that’s before the tournament has even started.
When I went to pick up my accreditation at the stadium that stages the opening game on the outskirts of the city, fully two days before the big kickoff, it was a five-hour round trip by cab. Same for the two-day FIFA Congress by bus in another part of town. A snail would have got there quicker. Nowhere, it would appear, is free from the gridlock nightmare. There are cities with a terrible reputation for traffic chaos. And then there is Sao Paulo.
FIFA, for their part, are putting on a brave face after all the delays, street protests and strikes in thr various World Cup cities. Yet the surprising lack of enthusiasm, verging on apathy, from fans of the most prolific purveyors of the beautiful game must be a concern, given the resentment at the cost of staging the tournament in contrast to the lack of government spending on public facilities.
Last year more than a million people took to the streets to protest. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has said she will not allow violent demonstrations to mar the World Cup but on Monday police clashed with striking workers at a downtown metro station.
In the buildup to the tournament, FIFA admitted preparations were among the worst ever. Workers were reported to be still scrambling to finish five of the 12 stadiums on the eve of the tournament, including St Paulo, while both domestic and foreign reporters have already expressed their wrath when the internet system at the FIFA Congress became overloaded and malfunctioned for most of the day Wednesday – hardly a good sign.
Brazilian authorities will be hoping nothing untoward gets in the way of the opening game in front of a capacity 65,000 crowd whose thoughts of a nightmare journey to the stadium will have eased after metro workers voted not to resume a strike over pay.
But as one problem ended another began, with airport workers in Brazil’s second largest city Rio de Janeiro announcing a 24-hour strike that started at midnight on Wednesday.
Still, FIFA say it has sold more than 2.9 million tickets for the first World Cup here for over half a century and despite the infrastructural and transport problems, there is something special about attending an opening game in a country that has won a record five World Cups and whose football is revered around the globe.
One can only hope the carnival atmosphere ultimately kicks in.
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