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Po debaklu Brazílie 1:7 s Německem na fotbalovém mistrovství světa byl Felipe Baez, Brazilec, žijící v Praze, šťastný. Pro motejlek.com vysvětluje proč.

Why Brazilians should not root for Brazil during the World Cup? I’m a Brazilian who has been living in Prague for 7 years now, my family still lives in Brazil and I’m not rooting for Brazil. While there is „bread and circus“, the population remains asleep and ignores everything wrong that is happening. Maybe if Brazil doesn’t win the World Cup, there will be a chance of people realizing how much they lost (just as a general information, the tickets for a match cost between 10.000 CZK and 20.000 CZK, the minimum wage in Brazil is around 6000kc). Who benefits from this World Cup are the banks collecting interest rate from people buying tickets on their credit cards that have a 120% interest rate per year, hotel owners and people dealing tickets in the parallel market.

People that don’t really know me and find out I’m Brazilian tend to always bring up the same things about Brazil, football (soccer for the American friends) and samba, once in a while caipirinha is also thrown in the mixture. It is a horrible label to have those things as what people know about Brazil and after the country got confirmed to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup, I also got asked a lot if I’d go back to Brazil to watch the matches.

Truth to be told, Brazil is a beautiful country that has flora and fauna like no other place on earth, beautiful landscapes and friendly people. It also has a very high index of people that can’t read nor write (8.7% in 2012, which means 13.2 million people), an amount higher than the whole population of Czech Republic and then some more. Brazil has problems with health care (the public system does not work) and if you don’t want to die waiting in a queue of a hospital, better have a private insurance that will cost you a lot (more than the minimum wage for a healthy young person). Public transport is also another matter that could see a lot more improvement and finally, security. According to Business Insider, 15 of the top 50 most dangerous cities in the world are in Brazil, and the violence doesn’t only come from outlaws and low lives, but from the police that attack pacific protesters with rubber bullets and tear gas. The same police that is supposed to protect the population often makes it to the papers and news outlets being accused of exaggerated use of force.

Along with all these problems we have Brazil’s leadership, the government, the same government that approved a law making any protests during the FIFA World Cup an act of terrorism. FIFA made Brazil overrule a law prohibiting alcoholic beverages to be sold in stadiums to instead allow only Budweiser (a sponsor) to be the sole beer provider at the stadiums. This law that had been placed to decrease violence during and after matches, has now been void for the interest of sponsors and the money making machine that feeds our politicians.

According to data released by the Brazilian government, the expenses with the World Cup totaled an amount of 25.6 Billion Reais (around 250.000.000.000 CZK, two hundred and fifty billion Czech Crowns), from that amount 83,6% were paid by the tax payers money and the rest, 4.2 billion Reais paid by private investors.

A very big portion of my friends agree that Brazil shouldn’t have been chosen to host neither the World Cup, neither the summer Olympics of 2016. If this amount of money from the tax payers could be spent, why not spend in education, health and security? The hope some had was that the FIFA World Cup would bring investments to the country and benefit it’s population, but there are many examples easy to find where the only ones who benefit from this are the big business owners (banks, hotels, airlines…) that are now charging in average ten times more for any services or goods.

Fortunately Brazil after humiliating defeat by Germans will not win the World Cup, however Brazilians lose, or in fact, Brazil, the country, its people, already lost beforehand. Lost the chance to fight for what is right. The government proved they can reach for money and make a mega event like the World Cup happen, can they now prove to the people that they can also change the security, health and education situation in the country?
Felipe Baez