Already you will sense that Rio, Fortaleza and Belo Horizonte will be a distant dream by the time the oligarchs and corporations who feed off Vladimir Putin's untrammelled power have splashed an $US18.6 billion budget (pounds 10.89 billion) that is expected to rise dramatically, as Sochi's did for the Winter Olympics.
Given the outrage over the Brasilia stadium budget overrun - to pick one example - the Russians are understandably sensitive to the inference that only their political and corporate classes bid for tournaments so everyone can get rich from building and infrastructure costs.
Russia's sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, told Reuters here in Rio: "It's absurd. Russia has a stable social and political system. There is no point in putting forward this argument. Russia won the right to host the tournament fairly and is a faithful partner."
But with Putin's presidential term up in 2018, and the country seeking global powerhouse status, a Russia World Cup is bound to be a political project, in the style of the Sochi Games, or the Beijing Olympics of 2008. "Our football is like murky water, a gateway for corruption. This is not going to go away in the run-up to the 2018 World Cup," said Alisher Aminov, president of Russia's national Fund for the Development of Football.
This Brazil World Cup tested the fortitude and the spending power of fans, who turned up in their hundreds of thousands but faced immense logistical difficulties travelling to games. Many adopted a backpacker's mentality, and accepted that the first World Cup in Brazil for 64 years was going to be a giant road (or air) trip. Their reward was more than a month of scintillating football.
As a country, Brazil is indeed "not for beginners", but culture, spirit and context shaped the football and the mood. Although the Selecao crashed to 7-1 and 3-0 defeats against Germany and Holland, Brazilian exuberance was evident right to the end. No Fifa digital media revolution from above can artificially create ambience or vibe. So the anxiety is that Russia will feel like an economic project, rather than a gathering of the world's peoples, with a vast travel map, major security concerns and the likelihood that prices will be ramped up outrageously. It will likely not be a World Cup that bothers about western sensibilities, as Russia's new anti-gay laws already illustrate.
With their national team flaming out under Fabio Capello here in Brazil, the 2018 hosts may be reduced to a spectator role early in their own tournament, though the Brazilians can hardly claim to have been credible contenders, given the 7-1 belting by Germany. The Russians, though, are unabashed. "Our country has a rich history of holding major sports tournaments, and this will be something special," Mutko said.
Compared to Qatar, Russia will be Woodstock. The 2022 World Cup is the one that evokes Munch's The Scream. Unless direct hard evidence is found linking the Qatari bid team to vote-buying then Fifa remains unlikely to enact the zero option of reopening the ballot. Thus we would be subjected to the farce of a World Cup in a country with no football culture, highly repressive laws, multiple construction deaths and temperatures too high for a summer tournament.
After the redemptive carnival of Brazil, there is a risk of the World Cup falling off a cliff for eight years. The event is changing fast in other ways, in line with cultural forces. One of the stories of this tournament was the growth of interest in America, which still holds the record for average live attendances from 1994. The 'Global Stadium' numbers in the United States will excite those inside Fifa who live with dollar signs in their eyes.
The 2014 World Cup was made by the players and the fans. The players ran themselves to a standstill and the supporters fell in love all over again with a tournament that belongs to everybody. But backdrop and setting matter. A World Cup's energy comes not from above but the ground up. Not from a Kremlin, not from potentates.
- The Daily Telegraph
