Santa and his reindeer came from the North Pole and played Scrooge for futebol, the nation's most popular spectator sport. Poor attendance, lackluster play and massive debts find even the most famous clubs tightening their belts.
Players are griping because teams delay paychecks. Managers balk at signing for less money. Third party syndicates continue to own shares of players like slices of churrasco, dribbling around FIFA rules.
Government subsidized football hasn't improved...
It was calm along the Esplanade on the afternoon of Friday, May 23rd. Most demonstrators who protest in front of the futuristic buildings along Brasilia’s divided highway of government were gone for the weekend.
After former president Jose Inacio Lula da Silva (known as “Lula”) made headlines by saying that anybody who uses the Metro (in Rio and Sao Paulo) to travel to FIFA World Cup games is an “idiot” (babaça) it was the perfect time for president Dilma Rousseff’s...
... geopolitics The impact of the FIFA private investigation. The future of Edward Snowden and Victor Bout. Conflict resolution in Syria and Ukraine. All of these events will intersect in the next few months in the real world and in the virtual world of social media and digital diplomacy that thrives on the internet. For those who posit that geopolitics and hegemony are dead concepts, the convergence of these forces has the potential to change the geopolitical landscape in the same way tectonic plates ...
... blog of the International Monetary Fund has predicted Brazil will pull ahead of France to become the world 5th largest economy in 2015. Just two months after president Luiz Inacio Lula daSilva assumed office in 2003 FIFA selected Brazil to host the 2014 World Cup, giving the former steelworkers union leader a surge of popularity. FIFA’s popular blog predicts the organization will earn $1.5 billion in net profit from promotional considerations connected to the next year’s event. The International ...
