Brazil shanty-town puts on show ‘for the English to see’

RIO DE JANEIRO: Members of England’s World Cup squad made a flying visit to Brazil’s largest shanty- town on Monday, yet observers were left wondering if it achieved little more than ‘para inglês ver’.

Five England players, Daniel Sturridge, Danny Welbeck, Adam Lallana, Jack Wilshere and Fraser Forster visited Rocinha, a col lection of cinderblock buildings, which houses 70,000 people, stacked up the steep side of a jungly, granite mountain.

Security was tight for the visit, which included a demonstration of capoeira, an Afro- Brazilian martial art, and the players kicking a ball with boys and girls on a battered, synthetic pitch.

“It put s everything into perspective,” Lallana said.

“It ’ s great to see this side of Brazi l, the kids enjoying themselves. It’s great to see the different cultures.”

The visit, however, felt little more than official glad handling by World Cup organisers, an example of the popular Brazilian saying ‘ para inglês ver,’ a Portuguese phrase meaning ‘ for the English to see’.

More deeply, it means doing something just for show to cover up inconvenient facts and was first used in the 19th century as Brazil tried to pretend it was meeting treaty promises to Britain to end the African slave trade.

At the sports complex, where police and heavily-armed solders stood guard while suitcase- sized, camera- carrying drones buzzed above the event scanning for trouble, the players had at least tried to get into the spirit of the event.

Sturridge and Welbeck did their best to join in with the high- kicking, cartwheeling capoeira kids, while English FA official Trevor Brooking said the organisation would make a “fivefigure” donation to the sports complex.

The money may be well received.

Brazil had promised improvements for poor shantytown residents as a legacy of the tournament, though the crime, violence and unfinished infrastructure projects that sparked street protests over the country’s World Cup priorities were not hard to find in the area surrounding Rocinha. — Reuters

— Reuters photo England’s Danny Welback performs capoeira during a visit to a sports complex at the Rocinha slum in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the 2014 World Cup.