Maybe countries should focus on construction based on the long range needs of their cities rather than hoping to re-use infrastructure cobbled together for a big event?

I'm reminded of the Seattle Center, which is great, but just in the last couple years we've done work which upgraded the meant-to-be temporary Flag Pavilion into a permanent structure. We treasure these remnants, but imagine if instead of the monorail they had actually committed to a regional transportation network back in the fifties.

I agree with your point that Brazil should have as much right to blow billions on frivolous sports projects as the US or any other country. But it's FIFA who's at fault, really, for not just allowing but encouraging short-sighted decisions about where and how to host the World Cup.

I've been lucky enough to attend 4 World Cups (USA, Germany, South Africa, and Brazil). Only in the first two, where infrastructure and stadiums were largely in place to begin with, did the tournament not cost an appalling amount for very little return to the country. in South Africa at least they got some freshly paved highways out of it, but I've been to Capetown to see the abandoned boondoggle of the stadium there. In Brazil, we drove from Salvador to Recife, and the entire 12 hour trip was full of half-finished projects like the picture in this article, interspersed with villages where the houses were made of scavenged sticks and plastic sheeting.

And out of this mess, FIFA will make a 4.5 billion dollar profit. In Rio, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Recife, and Natal (the cities I visited), I heard or saw "FIFA go home" or variations of it ten times more often than anything about Dilma Rousseff or the Brazilian government. Sure, those leaders should have done better, but it's FIFA that's to blame for allowing wasteful projects and then not even ensuring they get finished in time unless it's a stadium.

Also, the country is spelled Colombia.

That absurd military presence wasn't just for the protesters. It was mostly there so that the wealthy gringos who traveled there didn't get jumped by poor Brazilians & shame the nation. Without that protection, we would have heard many stories of foreigners getting mugged, shot, kidnapped, etc. Talk to some Brazilians (in Portuguese) and they will tell you that that sort of thing is commonplace without that military presence. Too bad everything is going to go back to normal now that the gringos are gone. Back to the everyday murders & muggings and the dysfunctional system that won't address the situation in an effective manner.

...and the summer Olympics are heading there in 2016.

Is it Post-World Cup failures or Pre-Olympics nightmares?

All of this is true, but let's keep in mind that no money to build anything would have come in had Brazil not bid for and won the right to host the World Cup. It would have just been the same poverty as before, with no infrastructure improvements of any kind. Don't kid yourselves into thinking they somehow would have still been able to receive and re-appropriate all this wealth.

I don't have a problem with professional sports, even if the capital outlays arguably displace better things the money could be spent on, like helping the homeless or better mental health support (you know, helping the homeless).

The difference to me is whether that money is coming from private or public funding. The way most professional stadiums in this country are funded is criminal- the costs are spread among the public and the gains go disproportionately to the private team owners.

I would not object philosophically to all public funding for sports- but there needs to be a *realistic* evidence-based rationale that the benefit *to the public* is worth the expense.

I don't know enough about the development and funding of the existing Seattle sport facilities to know whether they came close to meeting that test. I'd like to think the proposed basketball/hockey developments would have, and if so could have served as an example for a new model throughout the country (maybe that's why the other NBA owners nixed the team move), but I admit that I don't know for sure.

Is it paternalistic to believe needless, massive expenditures aimed at potential short-term gains in worldwide prestige and local nationalism are a stupid waste of money? Is it hypocritical to think large-scale spending on sports in another country foolish, while living in a city that foolishly spends money on (and further pursues) sports which enrich neither its culture nor its economy? Then I am a paternalistic hypocrite, but that doesn't make me wrong.

Brazil vs Germany funny parody)) http://videoworld.com.ua/Brazil-1-7-Alem…