November 13 – Australia are believed to be the first country to publicly raise concern about security at next year’s World Cup finals in Brazil because of all the recent civil unrest.
Millions of people took to the streets in June to protest against poor public services, coinciding with the Confederations Cup, the World Cup warm-up tournament. Since then sporadic demonstrations have continued in some cities.
Australian officials experienced the problem first-hand when police were forced to break up protesters before the Socceroos lost 6-0 to Brazil in a friendly in Brasilia in September.
“There clearly are some concerns and that’s why we’ve already retained local people to help us plan for that,” Football Federation Australia chief David Gallop told Australian Associated Press. “We’re already well advanced with our planning around the tournament.”
Australia have reached the World Cup finals for the third successive time and Gallop added: “We’ve engaged local people in Brazil as well as our own staff who have been through World Cups before. It’s certainly going to throw up some challenges and we need to make sure that things are run as smoothly from our end as possible.”
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