BERITA BOLA,- Brazil's former World Cup winning footballer, Romario de Souza Faria, is pessimistic that the 2014 World Cup will be the best World Cup of all time. The footballer-turned-politician now believes that next year's World Cup will not be successful.
Writing in his blog for the Guardian, Romario said the Brazilian government is not transparent in managing the 2014 World Cup preparations budget. Under the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the initial budget proposal only amounted to 25.5 billion Brazilian real (US$ 11.4 billion), for stadiums, urban transportation, improvements in ports and airports.
Under the presidency of President Dilma Rousseff, the budget has risen to R$28bn, according to the sports ministry's executive secretary, Luiz Fernandes--almost three times the cost of Germany's World Cup in 2006.
"Why are we organizing the most expensive World Cup in history, without any of the benefits to the community we were promised?" Romario wrote in the Guardian's column, Monday, June 24. "Numbers like these have made the public angry and fuelled popular protests, in a bid to reverse the logic of a system that privileges money over social matters."
The Brazilian Socialist party politician assesses that FIFA's promise that Brazil will reap R$4 billion tax-free profit from the World Cup as incomparable with the expense that Brazil must spend. Romario believes that Brazil has failed before the 2014 World Cup even started. This is the first time that a world cup event is being rejected by a third of population in a country where football is the most popular sport.
"I never thought the World Cup would solve all of our problems, but now my fear is that this mega event will only deepen the problems we already have," said Romario, the former striker who scored 55 goals in 70 caps for Brazil in his days.
(tempo.co)
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