Warming up for the World Cup

The preparation of the national teams just before the world cup usually varies a lot from country to country. This year it isn't different.

Some countries have a very particular way of preparing themselves. No journalist has seen the Argentine side practicing. Not even a single picture, but still, Argentina played against fairly good teams like when they beat Germany 1-0 weeks ago on friendly matches. South Africa had one of the longest preparations of all teams, since they got to practice and play friendly matches against club teams in Brazil, Germany and then traveled back to South Africa to finish their preparation playing friendly matches against regular teams such as Bulgaria, Colombia and Guatemala.

Brazil's practices are always easily shown by journalists but the only friendly matches of the team we'll see are those against Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Not very great football tests, what makes people think - Why Zimbabwe and Tanzania? The answer probably came when the news about the 5 million euros came up.

You take Zimbabwe, where you have to brush your teeth with mineral water because of the risk of Typhus and where the inflation is so high people can't even calculate it. Where you don't even have a common currency! Probably those problems have something to do with having a kind of a dictator who will take out the farms of white people in order to settle black population and think that will help the countries economy.

The fact is, sure dictators like Mugabe would certainly spend 5 million euros to bring the Brazil's national team and have them playing in order to bring joy to his population and make them forget about the problems he doesn't solve. The surprise is that CBF (Confederação Brasileira de Futebol) accepts - or pretend they don't care - the excuse of bringing joy to his suffered people. Worse than that is telling people that this is a test for the team. Come on, they should be ashamed and simply distribute the money among Zimbabwe’s population and also play there. That’s, certainly, would really bring joy to that country population and for a long time. Too bad they won't do that, of course, but even if they did, it would be even more political than it already is.

Ramay Nunes
footballinbrazil@gmail.com
Football-in-Brazil' team