As World Cup heats up, Brazilian business grinds to a halt

SAO PAULO - When Brazil's national soccer team takes the field in Berlin tomorrow morning (NZ time) for its first game of the 2006 World Cup, this continent-sized country of 185 million people will grind to a halt.

Nationwide, banks have received government approval to close early on game days. Courts and schools will shut down after a half day. And the Sao Paulo stock market will ring the closing bell two hours early so investors can watch Brazil's so-called magical quartet -- Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Adriano and Kaka --- work their magic in Germany.

In the capital Brasilia, the Senate and the House of Deputies have cancelled afternoon sessions on days when Brazil is scheduled to play. Government agencies, with the exception of the police and public hospitals, will close their doors two hours before kick-off times.

Even in Sao Paulo, a bustling metropolis with a workaholic streak, city officials expect the normally traffic-clogged streets to be virtually deserted when Brazil takes the field.

Rather than run the risk of having hordes of employees call in sick, many private companies are allowing staff to head home early. Others, like chemicals company DuPont, have also installed big-screen televisions for those employees that stick around.

"Soccer is an integral part of the culture in Brazil and people would be thinking about it anyway," said Jose Perdomo, a vice-president at DuPont in Sao Paulo. "This is about balancing the employees' needs and our business needs."

Brazil has plenty of reasons to be excited about its national team. It has won the World Cup a record five times, most recently in 2002 in Japan. It is the only country to have participated in all 17 World Cups, and it has played in the past three finals, winning two of them.

It is also the country that produced Pele, arguably the greatest to ever play the "beautiful game", although that is an honour that arch-rival Argentina tends to bestow on its own Diego Maradona.

Soccer is so ingrained in the national psyche that Brazilians of all ages still speak of the country's shocking loss to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup final in Rio de Janeiro's famed Maracana stadium as a national tragedy.

All across this soccer-crazed nation, cars, streets, apartment and office buildings are festooned with Brazilian flags and green-and-yellow banners that proclaim in Portuguese, "On Our Way to the Sixth."

Vendors swarm cars at intersections, hawking flags, Brazil soccer jerseys and other World Cup paraphernalia.

For some, especially bar and restaurant workers, the World Cup means big business and twice the work.

Bar Astor, a popular pub in Sao Paulo's bohemian Vila Madalena district, installed six flat-screen plasma TVs just for the Cup. Every seat in the bar -- almost 250 of them -- has already been reserved for all of Brazil's games.

"For us, the Cup is work, and lots of it," said Genival Silva, the bar's manager. "After all, people need something to drink while they watch the games."

- REUTERS