Brazil fans downbeat, wary about sequel to 2014
Three weeks to World Cup kick-off and the Brazilians are downbeat, underperforming, and generally hangdog -- Brazilian fans, that is.
Their team may be hot, steamrolling Latin American rivals in the qualifiers and gunning for a record sixth world title in Russia. But the yellow-shirted fan base is decidedly blue.
Souvenir sellers report slow business. Newspapers obsess over the state of superstar Neymar’s health. And the ghosts of the disastrous 2014 World Cup lurk.
According to an opinion poll by the Parana Institute, Brazilians are bullish about the actual football, which starts mid-June.
Two-thirds think the ‘Selecao’ is favourite to lift the trophy and 35% see Neymar as likely to be player of the tournament, compared to 30% for Portugal’s Cristiano
Ronaldo.
The problem, pollsters say, is not many Brazilians care.
Sixty six percent have little or no interest in the upcoming championship, while 14.5 percent don’t even know where it’s taking place.
“There’s not the same level of enthusiasm as before,” said driver Serafim Fernandes, as he shopped in soccermad Rio de Janeiro’s teeming Saara market. Fernandes, 62, blamed the economy for the lack of passion.
Four years ago, when Brazil hosted the World Cup, wall paintings and streets emblazoned in yellow and green sprouted around the nation well over a month before anyone touched the ball.
The enthusiasm was linked in part to the fact that the tournament was on home soil. But street painting, flag hanging and murals are an old tradition and the decorations’ absence so far this year is glaring.
At one of the many Rio de Janeiro stores selling Brazilian football kits, shopkeeper Paulo Santos Silva said he was being “prudent” about buying stock ahead of the tournament.
“Before, you could order 5,000 shirts, knowing they’d sell. Now you risk ending up stuck with them, so you buy 100, sell them, buy 100 and if we win a game buy 200,” he said.
Silva, 60, says the economic slowdown isn’t all that’s spooking him. There’s the “shameful” exit from the 2014 event, that 7-1 semi-final apocalypse against Germany. “It’s engraved on Brazilians’ memory,” he said.
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