Neither FIFA nor Brazil learned from the past. So many cities regret playing host to huge sporting events. Athens, for one, fell into debt after hosting the 2004 Olympics. Most of its once-sparkling athletic venues, including an arena just for taekwondo, are used sparingly at best and stand as reminders that holding the Summer Games in their birthplace sounded wonderful but wasn’t at all practical.

“What are we going to use this stadium for after the World Cup?” Marília Sueli Ferreira, who works at a stationery store in view of the Natal stadium, asked through an interpreter. “The World Cup is made for tourists, not for residents, and the tourists are going to disappear very soon.”


Last fall, I paid about $4 to tour Cape Town Stadium, which was built for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa but had turned into a cavernous ghost town. Maybe 100 people a week buy tickets to get a close look at the Cup-generated waste. The space can be rented for weddings or other events, like the small fashion show that I saw there.

Suites that once held World Cup parties were dusty and silent. The state-of-the-art locker rooms, with tiny safes at each stall and rows of sinks to wash dirt off cleats, remained untouched. Thousands of tiny lights glistened from the ceiling of a V.I.P. entrance.

The 55,000 seats remain empty most of the time, except when a handful are filled for games of a local soccer team, or when fans pack it for an occasional concert, as they did to see Justin Bieber. The playing surface is pristine and green.

Here’s what those towns are about to learn: It’s expensive to maintain a huge stadium and nearly impossible to do so, even in a city as big as Cape Town, if a major team doesn’t call that stadium home. That cities are left with that quandary is partly FIFA’s fault.

As the worldwide soccer ambassador, FIFA should discourage host countries from constructing permanent stadiums and encourage them to build temporary ones or rely on existing buildings. The I.O.C. should do that, too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/sports/worldcup/world-cup-2014-residents-wonder-how-new-stadiums-will-benefit-region-after-cup.html?rref=sports/worldcup&_r=0

Nice point. Unfortunately very true.

enm: Nice point. Unfortunately very true.

Yes o. Unfortunately, countries never learn. Events like the World Cup and the Olympics are mostly a waste of public expenditures and are monuments to human vanity especially to politicians who want to make a name for themselves as having brought a World Cup to their locale.