Analysis: The football in the protests

As a host for next year’s World Cup, Brazil has been building the stadiums and infrastructure necessary for the event. While football is a big passion in the country and citizens are proud to host such event, there is a general concern that the government is spending too much money and effort in its preparation, and citizens fear that hosting the World Cup will not bring any direct benefits to the country.

Many view FIFA’s relation with the government as troublesome and the resignation of theformer president of the Brazilian Football Confederation in 2012 is still on people's mind, contributing to a growing distrust of football moguls.

As the main test for the World Cup, the Confederations Cup is viewed as an ideal occasion for protesters to be taken seriously as the stakes for politicians of different levels (ie. federal government, States and host cities administrations) are very high. While FIFA is not the main target, the lack of tact of its leaders has upset more than one.

Analysis: Different sides in the protests

While 75% of the population supports the protests after the first week, this is done for different reasons:

The youngsters relying on non-partisan, occupy-movement inspired protests, find their voice over Anonymous. This approach is criticized by many who view this as over idealistic and without focus and those supporting it risks to be named "coxinhas" (newbies).

In the opposite of the spectrum you find more experienced protesters, mostly from the left wing movements, supporting a place for political parties - mainly PT (labour party, currently in power at the federal government) - at the protests. Their power comes from the protests in the 90s and they fear a nationalist movement leading to a right wing coup d'Etat.

Even if some of those supporting the protests are targeting the president Dilma Rousseff, the ordinary citizen prefers to target the national congress. With a number of scandals and poorly chosen representatives the congress has been the subject of growing insatisfaction since the mensalão (and even before).

To complete this equation, the governors of the biggest States in Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais are leaders of the opposition holding big expectations that the World Cup 2014 will give them an important chance to beat the re-election of president Dilma or to be re-elected as governors in the elections next year. That said, accusations of mismanagement in the construction of the stadiums were not doing them a favor.