five things hacks at The Greatest World Cup Ever ® aren't talking about ...

[grubby local]

The five things we’ve learned that 18,000 journalists at The Greatest World Cup Ever ® aren’t talking about:

1. the white-only crowd

Brazil has a population of 200 million people, and half define themselves as black or mixed race. Yet in the stadiums, it's hard to spot a black face. It’s not like South Africa 2010, it’s like South Africa 1980. Not even the kids holding the hands of the players are black. Only the players on the pitch. Even TV adverts (Sedex) are all-white. Yet no-one has noticed?

2. the empty seats

FIFA president Sepp Blatter is the biggest tout of all. The UK magazine that reported this, Private Eye, is a fearless satirical magazine with a serious investigative team.

Sepp’s mates have ‘450,000 tickets to resell to corporate hospitality clients in VIP boxes. These include 32,000 for Brazil games and another 12,000 for the final.’ link. Hence empty seats from the corporate no shows while the true fans are also priced out by …

3. street touts

FIFA and their corporate media sponsors like to publicise the arrests of touts but it’s open sale around the fan fests and the grounds. It’s a sellers’ market: 2nd round games are going for £600-£1,000 a seat in Rio and São Paulo.

4. when Brazil go out

In any game there are winners and losers. Brazilians hate losers. Unless they achieve the ultimate dream, this team are doomed to failure. Suddenly it’s all over. The magic dust evaporates. Frustration, anger. Was it all for this? It cost more than the last three World Cups put together and paid for by the people you say? One year on and the streets are boiling again … BOOM!

5. will there be another World Cup?

FIFA has been exposed like never before. Even though there are a million more column inches about Luisito Suarez, the news that 1,200 immigrant workers have died in the building of the Qatari stadia for FIFA 2022 has also sunk in. FIFA’s sponsors, Sony and Budweiser, have broken ranks and gone public in their criticism. It won’t happen. And will Russians, the Pussy Riot generation, take inspiration in the Brazilian protests in the lead up to 2018?

gx

 

[Pickman's model]

there will be another world cup. partly because the journos on their junket aren't talking about these things.

 

[CosmikRoger]

I should imagine that the vast majority of the journalists out there are sports journalists, so the chances of them doing any political stuff are pretty slim.

 

[Buckaroo]

The five things we’ve learned that 18,000 journalists at The Greatest World Cup Ever ® aren’t talking about:

1. the white-only crowd

Brazil has a population of 200 million people, and half define themselves as black or mixed race. Yet in the stadiums, it's hard to spot a black face. It’s not like South Africa 2010, it’s like South Africa 1980. Not even the kids holding the hands of the players are black. Only the players on the pitch. Even TV adverts (Sedex) are all-white. Yet no-one has noticed?

2. the empty seats

FIFA president Sepp Blatter is the biggest tout of all. The UK magazine that reported this, Private Eye, is a fearless satirical magazine with a serious investigative team.

Sepp’s mates have ‘450,000 tickets to resell to corporate hospitality clients in VIP boxes. These include 32,000 for Brazil games and another 12,000 for the final.’ link. Hence empty seats from the corporate no shows while the true fans are also priced out by …

3. street touts

FIFA and their corporate media sponsors like to publicise the arrests of touts but it’s open sale around the fan fests and the grounds. It’s a sellers’ market: 2nd round games are going for £600-£1,000 a seat in Rio and São Paulo.

4. when Brazil go out

In any game there are winners and losers. Brazilians hate losers. Unless they achieve the ultimate dream, this team are doomed to failure. Suddenly it’s all over. The magic dust evaporates. Frustration, anger. Was it all for this? It cost more than the last three World Cups put together and paid for by the people you say? One year on and the streets are boiling again … BOOM!

5. will there be another World Cup?

FIFA has been exposed like never before. Even though there are a million more column inches about Luisito Suarez, the news that 1,200 immigrant workers have died in the building of the Qatari stadia for FIFA 2022 has also sunk in. FIFA’s sponsors, Sony and Budweiser, have broken ranks and gone public in their criticism. It won’t happen. And will Russians, the Pussy Riot generation, take inspiration in the Brazilian protests in the lead up to 2018?

gx

and you've been here since 2002, 100 likes including one from me!

 

[weltweit]

There was a poignant cartoon showing a boy in a broken down favela looking into the distance at a lit up but unattainable stadium, this it said is Brazil 2014!

 

[skyscraper101]

The white only crowd (or 99% white) is something I picked up on in the first 5 minutes of the opening match.

The paradox is that Brazil is one of the least racist countries I've ever been in. It's just that the wealth divide is pretty obviously favoured towards the mainly white European-Brazilians rather than the indigenous or Afro/Mixed Brazilians.

 

[Buckaroo]

The white only crowd (or 99% white) is something I picked up on in the first 5 minutes of the opening match.

The paradox is that Brazil is one of the least racist countries I've ever been in. It's just that the wealth divide is pretty obviously favoured towards the mainly white European-Brazilians rather than the indigenous or Afro/Mixed Brazilians.

So it is racist then or it isn't, which?

 

[twistedAM]

The white only crowd (or 99% white) is something I picked up on in the first 5 minutes of the opening match.

The paradox is that Brazil is one of the least racist countries I've ever been in. It's just that the wealth divide is pretty obviously favoured towards the mainly white European-Brazilians rather than the indigenous or Afro/Mixed Brazilians.

Sounds like New England.

 

[Buckaroo]

 

[skyscraper101]

So it is racist then or it isn't, which?

It has an inherent wealth divide derived in part from from its historical makeup. Obviously imperialism and slavery was racist in its nature. What I'm saying is it's the least racist place I've been to in the sense that there many obvious personal hostilities between the races.

 

[Buckaroo]

It has an inherent wealth divide derived in part from from its historical makeup. Obviously imperialism and slavery was racist in its nature. What I'm saying is it's the least racist place I've been to in the sense that there many obvious personal hostilities between the races.

genuine question. There are or there aren't obvious personal hostilities between races?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Huge persisting economic racial divisions are a bit of a sign of racism being involved, usually. Unless everyone suddenly got anti-racist in the last few years and are working really hard to sort it out.

 

[grubby local]

racism is camoflagued behind the poverty lines. it's not overt in your face, so no there aren't personal hositilities between races. skyscraper is right, it's remarkably harmonious. doesn't mean racism doesn't exist though. you have to also understand that 99.6% of people who live in Brazil are Brazilians. The immigration of Japanese, Lebanese etc happened three or four generations ago.

is just galls me that it is simply never mentioned. I was actually in South Africa decades ago and TV in Brazil reminds me of TV there at that time - absolutely zero reflection of what you see on the streets in terms of the all-white presenters. Ditto in the stadiums.

gx

 

[ska invita]

The white only crowd (or 99% white) is something I picked up on in the first 5 minutes of the opening match.

read today:

"President Dilma Rousseff was booed and subjected to obscene chants during the opening match, but that was as much due to a moneyed Sao Paulo crowd protesting against her socialist policies."

 

[ska invita]

2. the empty seats

FIFA president Sepp Blatter is the biggest tout of all. The UK magazine that reported this, Private Eye, is a fearless satirical magazine with a serious investigative team.

Sepp’s mates have ‘450,000 tickets to resell to corporate hospitality clients in VIP boxes. These include 32,000 for Brazil games and another 12,000 for the final.’ link. Hence empty seats from the corporate no shows while the true fans are also priced out by …

this isnt new i dont think, nor is touting

 

[RandyYats]

Huge persisting economic racial divisions are a bit of a sign of racism being involved, usually. Unless everyone suddenly got anti-racist in the last few years and are working really hard to sort it out.

That's not necessarily true. These sorts of things are mostly just down to the fact that cultures are on the whole conservative. People absorb the culture and attitudes of their parents and the people in their 'tribe'. If a particular group of people is disadvantaged, that effect can easily be passed down through the generations and be maintained with almost no external help.
If black kids don't get very good education and opportunities, it's not their fault. But it's also not the white people's fault. It's society as a whole that's at fault.

 

[Pink Panther]

The five things we’ve learned that 18,000 journalists at The Greatest World Cup Ever ® aren’t talking about:

1. the white-only crowd

Brazil has a population of 200 million people, and half define themselves as black or mixed race. Yet in the stadiums, it's hard to spot a black face. It’s not like South Africa 2010, it’s like South Africa 1980. Not even the kids holding the hands of the players are black. Only the players on the pitch. Even TV adverts (Sedex) are all-white. Yet no-one has noticed?

2. the empty seats

FIFA president Sepp Blatter is the biggest tout of all. The UK magazine that reported this, Private Eye, is a fearless satirical magazine with a serious investigative team.

Sepp’s mates have ‘450,000 tickets to resell to corporate hospitality clients in VIP boxes. These include 32,000 for Brazil games and another 12,000 for the final.’ link. Hence empty seats from the corporate no shows while the true fans are also priced out by …

3. street touts

FIFA and their corporate media sponsors like to publicise the arrests of touts but it’s open sale around the fan fests and the grounds. It’s a sellers’ market: 2nd round games are going for £600-£1,000 a seat in Rio and São Paulo.

4. when Brazil go out

In any game there are winners and losers. Brazilians hate losers. Unless they achieve the ultimate dream, this team are doomed to failure. Suddenly it’s all over. The magic dust evaporates. Frustration, anger. Was it all for this? It cost more than the last three World Cups put together and paid for by the people you say? One year on and the streets are boiling again … BOOM!

5. will there be another World Cup?

FIFA has been exposed like never before. Even though there are a million more column inches about Luisito Suarez, the news that 1,200 immigrant workers have died in the building of the Qatari stadia for FIFA 2022 has also sunk in. FIFA’s sponsors, Sony and Budweiser, have broken ranks and gone public in their criticism. It won’t happen. And will Russians, the Pussy Riot generation, take inspiration in the Brazilian protests in the lead up to 2018?

gx

Depends which papers you read. I regularly read the Times and Sunday Times and there's been quite a lot of allusion to all or most of these points. Only a few days back I read a comment that FIFA's rampant commercialisation of every aspect of the tournament has spoiled it.

As for Qatar in 2022, I'd like to think several leading nations wouldhave the balls to boycott it if FIFA try to press ahead with it. How Blatter can have the front to talk of standing for another term as FIFA President is staggering, Clearly the man has no shame and really must be stopped. Again, if enough major nations resigned from FIFA and set up a breakaway body . . . . .