Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff took a swipe at the naysayers on Monday as she inaugurated the last of six stadiums that Brazil will use next month to host a warm-up for the 2014 World Cup tournament.
“The pessimists said the stadiums would not be ready in time, but we are showing them today that we can deliver high-quality stadiums,” Rousseff said in a speech in Recife before opening the 46,000-seat Arena Pernambuco outside the northeastern Brazilian city.
Rousseff said Brazil is fulfilling its commitments with FIFA, whose secretary general Jerome Valcke last year angered Brazilians by saying the country needed a “kick up the backside” to get World Cup preparations moving.
On Saturday, Rousseff kicked the first symbolic ball on the newly-laid pitch of the brand new Mane Garrincha National Stadium in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia, where Brazil will face Japan in the first game of the eight-nation Confederations Cup on June 15.
At a cost 1.2 billion reais ($590.1 million), the colonnaded stadium is the most expensive of the 12 that Brazil is building for next year’s 32-nation World Cup, and a prime candidate to become a white elephant in a city with no major soccer club.
Yet some of its 309 toilets were not ready yet and flooded during a test game between two local teams that filled half the 71,000-seat stadium.
Its big test will come next Sunday when two of Brazil’s top teams – Flamengo and Santos – will fill the venue for the opening of the Brazilian national league.
“These six stadiums show the ability and determination we have building the six remaining stadiums,” Rousseff said.
Only two stadiums were completed in time for the December deadline originally set by FIFA which said it will not budge on the deadline for the second batch of stadiums due by the end of this year.
The main problem will be the Sao Paulo stadium where the World Cup is due to kick off in June 2014.
Builders threatened to halt construction because of a financing dispute that might throw Brazil’s hosting of the World Cup into disarray and embarrass the government.
Cranking up security ahead of the Confederations Cup, Brazil launched a massive military operation last weekend to secure its porous 16,802km frontier, much of which is Amazon jungle and rivers.
The 25,000 troops and police agents will crack down on drug trafficking and smuggling of arms and illegal migrants, Brazil’s defence ministry said.