It is not for nothing that Brazil has been dubbed “o País do Futebol”, or the country of football. Latin America’s biggest nation is the only country to have won the World Cup five times.
Such has been its success that in 1970 it was allowed to keep the original World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Cup. Fifa’s rules at the time conferred that right on the first team to win the event three times.
But with just over two weeks to go before the 2014 competition kicks off in São Paulo on June 12, Brazilians are showing little enthusiasm for the tournament that awaits.
It is not just a surge in strikes and protests that is giving this impression. The street buzz in Brazil that usually precedes a World Cup – the adorning of cars with flags and banners, the painting of walls and streets in the national green and gold – is not much in evidence this year. Normally, it would already have started straight after Carnival in early March.
So, is Brazil still the country of football? Or has it changed in ways that Fifa, the World Cup’s organising body, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the country’s politically astute former president, failed to foresee in 2007 when they agreed to stage the tournament?There are probably two reasons for Brazilians’ apparent ambivalence. The first is anxiety that slapdash preparations for the World Cup will embarrass them before the planet. People may also be reluctant to associate themselves with an event criticised as corrupt (although nothing has yet been proven in court on this front) and as a waste of public money when essential services are lacking.
The second, and more deep-rooted explanation concerns demographics. Brazil has simply grown up. Brazilians are older and busier than they were during the country’s World Cup triumphs of previous decades. That is leaving them with less time to think about football.
The percentage of 15-24 years old in the population has fallen from 21 per cent in 1980 to 17 per cent now, according to data from Nomura and IBGE, Brazil’s statistics agency.
Meanwhile, the number of Brazilians in the prime working age population of 25-59 years old has increased from about 35 per cent in 1980 to 48 per cent. The people in this age bracket are today close to fully employed. Unemployment is at a record low, hitting 4.9 per cent in April compared with 12 per cent a decade ago.
More younger people are staying all the way through school and on to university. The proportion of Brazilians with nine or more years of education has almost doubled in the past decade, Nomura found.
So far these demographic trends have worked in Brazil’s favour. The growth of the workforce is slowing as the proportion of young people declines, helping to keep unemployment low even at a time of weak economic growth.
But eventually it will also present the same problems that other countries are grappling with, particularly the issue of how the state will finance unfunded pension liabilities.
Brazil has time to prepare for those more distant challenges. It has less room to turn public opinion around on the World Cup.
The government is doing its best with advertisements telling Brazilians to stage the “Copa das Copas”, or the greatest World Cup of all time. Featuring mind-boggling numbers on the supposed benefits of the tournament for jobs and investment, the ads try to convince Brazilians the tournament is their tournament.
Probably the old excitement and energy will return once the international teams start arriving. For sure, Brazilians’ love of soccer has not gone the way of the Jules Rimet Cup, which disappeared from its display case in Rio de Janeiro in 1983 and was probably melted down for its gold.
Anyone who attended the final last year of Fifa’s Confederations Cup, the dress rehearsal for the World Cup, in which Brazil defeated Spain, would have been convinced by the enthusiasm of the crowd that Brazil was still o Pais do Futebol.
Only now, perhaps, it is a slightly more mature one with other things on its mind than just the beautiful game.
The government is doing its best with advertisements telling Brazilians to stage the “Copa das Copas”, or the greatest World Cup of all time. Featuring mind-boggling numbers on the supposed benefits of the tournament for jobs and investment, the ads try to convince Brazilians the tournament is their tournament.
Probably the old excitement and energy will return once the international teams start arriving. For sure, Brazilians’ love of soccer has not gone the way of the Jules Rimet Cup, which disappeared from its display case in Rio de Janeiro in 1983 and was probably melted down for its gold.
Anyone who attended the final last year of Fifa’s Confederations Cup, the dress rehearsal for the World Cup, in which Brazil defeated Spain, would have been convinced by the enthusiasm of the crowd that Brazil was still o Pais do Futebol.
Only now, perhaps, it is a slightly more mature one with other things on its mind than just the beautiful game.
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