Waiting to exhale

Jason Burt
The 2014 Fifa World Cup, which gets underway in Sao Paulo tomorrow night, represents a spiritual voyage for football, a homecoming show, with 32 countries out to deliver a joyous carnival to cheer the spirits of the globe for a month.
How glorious and uplifting it would be if this tournament, which starts with a game between hosts Brazil and Croatia, was a real celebration of the game — of what it means and the smiles it can bring.

Yet set against all that there are some very well-founded fears: of whether this vast country’s infrastructure can cope, of whether the price to pay in financial and social terms is justifiable — sadly it already appears not — and above all, whether this will be a Brazilian World Cup or merely a Fifa World Cup in Brazil.

Four years ago in South Africa a nation was left feeling it had been used.

The first World Cup to be held on the continent was not allowed to gain its own identity, a consequence of Fifa corporate gloss and sanitisation.

The World Cup came; the World Cup went and the townships were even more ghettoised — just as the favelas fear they will be this time. The legacy to Africa was questionable and its bill was obscene.

Surely will Brazil allow that to happen?

The bill is already outrageous — this has become the most expensive World Cup in history and by some distance — but surely the country is so embedded in the psyche of the sport, having held the competition in 1950 and been its main reference point ever since, that not even the slick of Sepp Blatter corporatism can submerge it.

There is also, of course, the growing storm over alleged Fifa corruption to be factored in; of the stench surrounding the award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar and the hope that this bloated edifice of an organisation might somehow be heading for reform.

The purists will hope that the whole shabby affair will be parked for a month, but maybe Fifa does not deserve that.

Another problem in South Africa was that the football failed to fire.

It was not a tournament with matches that evoked rich memories: there was little in the way of hectic drama, or incidents of stand out individual brilliance.

The best World Cups, as England manager Roy Hodgson has noted, are seized by the world’s best players, whether it is Diego Maradona, Zinedine Zidane or, of course, Pele.

This tournament already has so much to offer with its Brazilian backdrop that it would be a deep shame if its galácticos did not provide more of those memories.

The stage is set for the established superstars — for Lionel Messi, for Cristiano Ronaldo, for Luis Suárez, maybe a new generation of hero will emerge in the shape of Eden Hazard, Diego Costa or Neymar. Maybe Wayne Rooney might even reignite his tournament spark?

Anything is possible.

Spain arrive as world champions, as double European champions, and yet no nation from Europe has won the World Cup in South America. Their task is made all the more daunting by the group in which they find themselves — one that also features Holland, a rugged Australia and the thrilling dark-horses of Chile.

However, Spain are hardened as well as talented and their coach Vicente del Bosque will draw on last year’s experiences in the Confederations Cup, when they were crushed in the final by Brazil.

Already there is talk of modifying Spain’s style of play to deal with the conditions, but any objective assessment of the squad lists submitted to Fifa last week would conclude, undoubtedly, that the holders certainly have the strongest 23 players.

If Spain were to triumph then this generation of their players would go down as the greatest ever in the history of football — a claim they are already close to being able to make — but there are intriguing rivals lying in every other group: a revitalised Argentina whose strike force is so formidable that they can omit Carlos Tévez; the exciting, callow youth of Belgium, Holland and Germany; the unpredictable France, the Ronaldo-inspired Portugal and the old warhorse that is Uruguay under Óscar Tabárez.

There are more: Bosnia, with Edin Dzeko; Croatia, with Luka Modric; Italy, with the seductive grace of Andrea Pirlo and, dare it be said, England, with their potential for vim and vigour should Hodgson unleash his young Lions.

They, too, should be allowed to run free.

And, finally, there is Brazil.

Installed, inevitably, as the favourites, the biggest yoke they face is that of expectation. The nation’s footballers could not do that in 1950, when 200 000 packed into the Maracana only to watch, gobsmacked, as Uruguay emerged victorious in what is known as the Maracanazo.

Yet there are grounds for local optimism. In Luiz Felipe Scolari, Brazil have a personality big enough and stubborn enough to deal with all of the attendant hysteria and also one that has won the World Cup before, having led Brazil to their last triumph in Japan and South Korea in 2002.

A weight was lifted last year with Brazil winning the Confederations Cup, comprehensively defeating Spain and there was the palpable sense of a team and a nation growing in belief as that competition progressed.

The sight of players and supporters singing the Brazilian national anthem at the Confederations Cup, long after the music had stopped, was remarkable.

Scolari has also done what he usually does in settling on his squad early: he has created the theme of the Familia Scolari, with Felipao as its father figure.

He expects absolute loyalty, and no dissent is countenanced within his ranks, yet he also gives back loyalty and the squad he will choose from in tomorrow’s opener against Croatia is largely the same as last year’s. The fear for Brazil, for Fifa and for the authorities is what happens if the Selecao fail, and fail early.

Brazilians do not revel in watching other teams play and if they are playing in their country, and a country that is paying such a high price for this World Cup, then the situation becomes hugely incendiary.

The civil unrest that appears inevitable would spread like wildfire and a country that teeters on chaos even in the best of times would grind to a halt.

The problem for Brazil is that better teams than this one have failed and the side lack a genuine superstar.

Neymar is struggling to justify that billing to such an extent that David Luiz has become the public face of the squad.

Who will win it? It would be the most magical of sporting stories for England — the country that started this great game becoming world champions again in the country that perfected the way it is played — to triumph but that, frankly, appears far-fetched.

Spain can do it; Argentina also.

But, given everything, given every adversity, every concern and every problem, maybe it is fitting that as football returns to its spiritual home that the glory also remains in Brazil.

They can and, despite everything, become world champions at home and banish Maracanazo for good — 64 years after football plunged an entire nation into mourning. — Daily Telegraph.