Brazil Awarded World Cup 2014

Sean O'Conor

And the winner is....not Blatter

The football world's worst-kept secret was officially revealed in Zurich today as FIFA confirmed that Brazil will host the 2014 World Cup.

With only one candidate left in the race, President Sepp Blatter announced the news that the sport's premier tournament will return to the home of the five-time winners for the first time since 1950.

South America was guaranteed the finals as far back as 2003 in the last example of FIFA's now ditched rotation policy, and when first Argentina and then Colombia withdrew their candidatures, Brazil found themselves alone in the queue to host the finals.

Nevertheless, crowds of people celebrated across the country at the news, such is the fanaticism for football in the land of Pele.

Yet Brazil's hosting appears as problematic as South Africa's does for 2010. Blatter has made no secret of the fact that the one-horse race in South America has allowed Brazil to sit on its laurels and ignore the areas of its bid in need of attention.

Brazilian football expert Tim Vickery put Blatter's dilemma bluntly:

"There is no way Brazil will be able to provide what Germany did last year in delivering magnificent public transport networks between and inside cities and state-of-the-art stadiums," he wrote, adding that sports minister Orlando Silva's promise of the best tournament ever was "empty rhetoric all too typical of Brazil's pampered, peacock-strutting authorities."

Poor Sepp Blatter! He winced when he had to reveal that Germany had pipped his favoured South Africa at the finish to stage the World Cup in 2006.

Now in 2007, with worries about South Africa's 2010 hosting still pressing, Blatter felt equally powerless as he unveiled a second dodgy destination with decrepit stadia for the world's biggest show.

At least the FIFA President was honest enough to confirm what everyone knew, prefacing his announcement with some less than flattering remarks about the 'winners'.

"The task was not easier," he insisted. "For us it was a real big challenge to have the same list of requirements and the same conditions for only one candidate than if we had two."

"The FIFA executive committee today meeting, and going to election to announce what?" he asked aggrieved, betraying months of frustration. "To say they are able, or to say they are not able?"

His celebratory introduction then almost turned into a rant, rather inappropriately for the occasion, focusing on the numbers of talented Brazilians playing overseas.

"And if we don't stop the invaders," spluttered Blatter emotively, "perhaps already in 2018 we will have only Brazilian footballers in all the national teams around the world. We don't want that…please keep most of your footballers in your country" - !

And when it came to the golden phrase, Blatter grimaced and wagged his finger as he stressed that FIFA had awarded Brazil the responsibility, not only the right but the responsibility," to host the event. Obrigado, FIFA.

Despite such a lukewarm if not overly inhospitable welcome, the suited sycophants in attendance clapped and a few whooped as Brazil's name was pulled from the envelope and Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva held the trophy, flanked by 1994 World Cup winners Dunga and Romario, the latter looking oddly out of place in a suit, given his hell raising reputation.

Blatter wasn't finished. After the first press question from the floor had asked controversial Brazilian football association president Ricardo Teixeira about violence in his country, Blatter strode back to the podium and reminded those present he was 'the patron of this house', before asking them to 'please respect a little bit towards football, the institution, the house of FIFA and to our guests here!'

Another question made Blatter and the four panelists – Teixeira, Dunga, Romario and best-selling author Paolo Coelho, shift uneasily in their seats.

'Where is Pele?' a Reuters journalist asked reasonably if cheekily, doubtless aware of the 14-year feud between the great player and Teixeira.

Pele was memorably excluded from the 1994 World Cup draw on Joao Havelange's orders, following his criticism of the then FIFA President's son-in-law Teixeira for accepting a bribe from a television company while chief of the football association.

Pele retaliated by failing to back Brazil's 2006 bid, which duly floundered, but after today's announcement, it would surely be an international footballing shame if the sport's greatest player were not involved in his own country's hosting of the finals.

An inauspicious start therefore, to Brazil's 2014 host status. With so much work to be done, seven years appears a short timescale for the improvements required.

Blatter, worried enough already about his baby South Africa's show in three years' time, grudgingly handed Brazil the keys to the 2014 World Cup today in Switzerland, well aware that two consecutive poorly-organised finals will tarnish a legacy already coloured by persistent allegations of serious wrongdoing within FIFA corridors.

Sean O'Conor

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