Brazil Beauty Dies
With the 3 – 0 beating by Holland, the World Cup nightmare for Brazil is complete. First their talisman Neymar broke a bone in his back. Then their captain Thiago Silva was suspended from the important Germany game. Then the Germany game produced the sort of result you expect from a bog standard Sunday League pub team not a team rated number 3 by FIFA Rankings, and finally, the Holland match.
To say that the protesters were right about the sheer cost and lunacy of hosting the World Cup has been proved right wold be glib but correct. The whole point of ‘bread and circuses’ ie using economic leverage or entertainment to buy of the proletariat, is to give yourself room to impose unpopular policies.
Well it seems the unpopular policy was the World Cup which cost $14 billion and was top show the emergence of Brazil as a economic powerhouse. But the economy has suffered a reverse due to China’s slow down. The ‘trickle down’ benefits never happened because trickle down economics never work and the country has been humiliated in the one thing that the World loves about Brazil its football.
From the ‘beautiful game’ to clowns in yellow is not what we wanted to see but, this has been served up in spades in the last 3 hours of football.
This is now a wake up call to the Brazilian nation. What of having trickle down economics when all the evidence prove that it does not work for the many it only works for the few? It is time to address the problems of shanty towns, lack of clean water and economic inequality. Football is not the answer but in the end changing the shirt colours – as Brazil did the last time they were humiliated in football – will not create a better society.