"Brazilians won't solve their health problems in a football stadium" (Romario)

"It is not in a football stadium that Brazilians will find the answers to their health problems," said Romario, Brazilian member of parliament and former international footballer in an article published in Le Monde on the 28/06/2013. For the Brazilian former striker, the allocation of funds for the construction and refurbishment of stadiums for the 2014 World Cup has come at the expense of the population's needs in terms of education, health and safety .

"I never thought the World Cup would solve all of our problems, but now my fear is that this mega event will only deepen the problems we already have," Romario added.

• BUDGET

"The World Cup proposal was to have an event in which there was transparency on public spending. The opposite has occurred. An initial budget of €8.23bn for stadiums, urban transportation, improvements in ports and airports, has risen to €9.7bn.

• TRANSPORT

Plans to improve traffic around host cities have turned out to be chaotic, too; of 82 planned works, only 25 were delivered on time and only three stuck to their budgets and deadlines. Numbers like…