Countdown to Brazil's World Cup

The World Cup is receiving wide coverage from the international press. Fortunately, football is not the center of the discussions.

      With less than a month to go, organisers are scrambling to get everything ready. [...] Just five of 35 planned urban-mobility schemes are complete.

        Brazil’s government insisted on staging games in 12 cities, rather than the required eight, in order to spread the benefits across the country. [...] The whitest of these elephants, in Brasília, may end up consuming 2 billion reais ($900m), nearly triple the initial estimate. After the Cup it is unlikely ever to draw capacity crowds again, as the city lacks a good league side.

        Support for hosting the World Cup has fallen sharply, from 79% after it was awarded to Brazil in 2007 to 48% now, according to Datafolha, a pollster

Here is Simon Jenkins's article for The Guardian and a critical take on it by Chris Gaffney.

[image credit: Antonello]

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