Rio de Janeiro – Qatar has the economic firepower to promote an exceptional World Cup. The statement was made by the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, this Friday (3rd), during a press conference for foreign correspondents in Rio de Janeiro. Lula deemed positive the choice of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) of holding a World Cup in a region which, according to him, appears on the news due to violence in the Middle East or for the amount of petroleum it has. "Those who know Qatar as I do and as so do many of you do, know they have the economic firepower to host an exceptional Cup," claimed the president.
The Arab country is going to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup, according to an announcement made by Fifa this Thursday (2nd), and Russia will host the contest in 2018. Brazil will hold the championship in 2014, so it will pass the ball on to the Russians four years after that. "It will be very interesting because, once the World Cup ends, after the final match in Brazil, we know that Brazil will be training to play in Moscow, at a time of year when Russia looks beautiful and there is no snow. I think [the decision] was extraordinary and very wise on Fifa’s part, because the World Cup needs decentralizing. Russia is a large country, it had never hosted a World Cup before, so it is only fair," said Lula.
When asked about the investment that Brazil will make in order to host the World Cup and the losses that the competition has generated in other countries, such as Greece and South Africa, Lula reaffirmed the advantages of hosting a competition of this size. "The World Cup leads to such deficit that the United States want to host it again," said Lula ironically. He underscored that the federal government is not investing money in the works, but it has made financing available, by means of the National Development Bank (BNDES), for the country’s states to do so. And he has claimed that these funds will be returned to the states.
The president underscored that in addition to the FIFA World Cup of football, the structure will be used in other major sports events, such as the America Cup (2015) and the Olympic Games (2016). "We will have five years of sports activities," said the president. "We are going to host an exemplary World Cup. We hope lots of people will come to see what we are capable of," he said. And he joked about football, claiming that what cannot happen is for Brazil to lose a final match at the Maracanã stadium, as it happened in 1950. "That would lead to an outpouring of tears," he said.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
