Brazil gears up for 2014 challenge

When South Africa switches off the World Cup lights on Sunday, the focus will switch to 2014 hosts Brazil, a country desperately hoping to avoid the pitfalls of 1950.

Back then, their much-vaunted national team slumped to a 2-1 defeat against Uruguay in the final, watched by 200,000 people crammed into Rio’s mythical Maracana stadium.

“To lose in 2010 could be understood, but to lose in 2014 would be a repeat of 1950 and this is something nobody can imagine,” said Ricardo Teixeira, the president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) who is also head of the 2014 organising committee.

Brazil is still mourning the failure of its 2010 team to win a sixth World Cup with Dunga’s side losing to the Netherlands in the quarter-finals in South Africa.

Their under-performing national team has proved a worrying concern, a dilemma which will be compounded if Brazil, also hosting the 2016 Olympics, fails to deliver a memorable tournament in 2014.

Work on stadia has progressed fitfully with the planned arena of Morumbi in Sao Paulo, a teeming city of 17 million and the country’s largest, being cut from the programme by world governing body FIFA for failing to deliver on financial guarantees.

The refurbishment of the Maracana is also causing headaches with tenders for the work estimated at costing 400 million dollars already postponed once.

So far, FIFA had approved six of the 12 host cities – Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Cuiaba, Curitiba, Manaus and Porto Alegre.

The construction or renovation of stadia form part of a list of 86 government-backed projects which will cost a total of 13.2 billion dollars.

Organisers expect around three million extra tourists during the tournament, an increase of 79 percent on the traditional annual figure, adding to the problems of choked airports, some of which are close to “operational collapse”, according to one study.

“The problem for 2014 is the airports, the airports and the airports,” admitted Texeira, during a presentation of the 2014 tournament he hosted in Johannesburg.

“But contracts have been agreed and this question will receive the utmost priority. We have developed a communal transport system.”

The bill to renovate 16 airport terminals has shot up to seven billion dollars in order to boost capacity of 66 percent.

Former Brazil star Romario, a world champion in 1994, is doing his bit for the 2014 organisers and said: “I hope it will be a chance to show you the true face of Brazil. You will see what football means to Brazilians. I am sure the atmosphere will be unprecedented.

“We can expect a great fiesta – and I hope we become world champions.”

Brazil is about to be an epicentre of sport.

As well as the World Cup, the country will stage the 2013 Confederations Cup, the 2015 Copa America and the 2016 Olympics.

“We will organise the best World Cup ever seen on the planet,” boasted Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.