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Sunday 7 July 2013

"You host a World Cup with stadiums, not hospitals"

It reads like a quote from one of the legion of old men who run football, both in Brazil and globally.

Conceivably it could have been uttered by Sepp Blatter minutes before he hopped aboard a flight to Turkey (oh, the irony) midway through the Confederations Cup, apparently disgusted that the Brazilian people had had the temerity to protest social ills during a FIFA event.


It could have been the cadaverous Jose Maria Marin, clown prince of Brazil's football association. Such a statement would hardly have been out of place on his rap sheet of previous crimes, the undoubted centerpiece of which was his support for Brazil's military dictatorship in the 1970s.

But the words were uttered by someone who, until recently at least, had a rather higher approval rating among football fans in Brazil. They came from the mouth of Ronaldo Fenômeno.

Read the rest of this article, on Ronaldo, Romário, Brazil's World Cup spending and the perils of entering football's political underworld, over at ESPN FC. 

(Image: Getty)

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