The beautiful game is up. When Brazil is conditioned to hate the World Cup and its people traduce Pele as a traitor, football has lost its relevance and its reason. International sport may never be the same again.
Revolutions are sudden, instinctive and deadly. Empty rhetoric, regurgitated by grandees such as Sepp Blatter, has been rejected by those who want schools and hospitals rather than bread and circuses. It is hard to avoid the conclusion a tipping point has been reached.
Violent images from Brazil, of demonstrators silhouetted by flames and riot police using rubber bullets and pepper spray to suppress mass protest, have a relevance beyond the current Confederations Cup, next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Once major sports events become a focal point for social unrest and political opportunism, in the way such global governmental summits as G8 attract activists, they are an embarrassment rather than an embellishment to a nation's image.
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Yet they are deaf to those who resent their irreconcilable privileges. Fifa made in excess of £2 billion from the 2010 World Cup, leaving South Africa's fragile economy to underwrite building programmes, infrastructure projects, policing and security strategies. London's Olympic legacy is negligible.
The World Cup, like the Olympics, is collapsing under the weight of its pretension. When Blatter lectured protesters for threatening football's "spirit, essence and integrity" he was reminded that he succeeded a Brazilian, Joao Havelange, who was exposed as corrupt and despotic. Full story...
Related posts:
Revolutions are sudden, instinctive and deadly. Empty rhetoric, regurgitated by grandees such as Sepp Blatter, has been rejected by those who want schools and hospitals rather than bread and circuses. It is hard to avoid the conclusion a tipping point has been reached.
Violent images from Brazil, of demonstrators silhouetted by flames and riot police using rubber bullets and pepper spray to suppress mass protest, have a relevance beyond the current Confederations Cup, next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Once major sports events become a focal point for social unrest and political opportunism, in the way such global governmental summits as G8 attract activists, they are an embarrassment rather than an embellishment to a nation's image.
(...)
Yet they are deaf to those who resent their irreconcilable privileges. Fifa made in excess of £2 billion from the 2010 World Cup, leaving South Africa's fragile economy to underwrite building programmes, infrastructure projects, policing and security strategies. London's Olympic legacy is negligible.
The World Cup, like the Olympics, is collapsing under the weight of its pretension. When Blatter lectured protesters for threatening football's "spirit, essence and integrity" he was reminded that he succeeded a Brazilian, Joao Havelange, who was exposed as corrupt and despotic. Full story...
Related posts:
- No, I'm not going to the World Cup...
- Brazil is saying what we could not: we don't want these costly extravaganzas...
- Former FIFA president Joao Havelange received millions of dollars in...
- Protesters flood Brazilian cities over World Cup spending...
- Brazilians tell the world: DON’T COME to the 2014 World Cup...
- The World Cup and South Africa, the dark side...
- France Football says Qatar bought 2022 World Cup rights...
- FIFA, the FA, Blatter and Qatar's World Cup...
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