Eamon Dunphy fears that political unrest could mar the World Cup

The latest opinion poll shows 52% of Brazilians against the tournament being staged there, mainly because of the huge overspend in building stadiums and the heavy-handed police response to protests.
“There are reasons to worry,” he said this afternoon at the launch of RTÉ’s World Cup coverage. “Not just about the corruption in the country but also in the Brazilian (Football) Federation and FIFA. The picture is very grubby; it’s ugly and it’s tainting football. The key will probably be how Brazil is doing. If they start exciting people and making the country proud I think the protests may be more muted. But if they don’t play well people will want to make trouble for the association, which is very unpopular in Brazil. The domestic game is very poor; they lose all their players to Europe and they’re not a great (international) side so I think it could be very bad.
“FIFA’s image has been badly damaged by the Sunday Times story last week. Not that it was good before but it’s in shreds now and we know that there’s been terrible corruption. That will overshadow the tournament to some extent.”
Those sentiments were echoed by RTÉ anchor Bill O’Herlihy who proffers, “I hope that the unrest in Brazil doesn’t translate itself into the World Cup period because that would spoil everything. On another level you can fully understand why they’re so annoyed down there about so much money being spent on football when it could be spent on the country itself.”
On a more positive note, it was announced that former USA international Brad Friedel and ex-Ireland Under 21 coach Paul Clement, who’s now part of the Real Madrid set-up, will join Eamon Dunphy, John Giles, Liam Brady, Ronnie Whelan, Didi Hamann, Ossie Ardilles, Kenny Cunningham, Richie Sadlier and Neil Lennon in analysing the 56 live games and 25 highlight programmes RTÉ will be airing.
We’ll have more – lots more! – on the World Cup in our new issue out next Thursday.