Rio Report -- FIFA, Rio Mayor Chastise Brazil

Rio Mayor Criticizes Sports Policy

The mayor of Rio de Janeiro denounced his country’s sports policy, claiming it leaves the future of new Olympic facilities in doubt and is costing his city much-needed funds.

As reported by the BBC, Rio mayor Eduardo Paes told ESPN that covering the bulk of the expenses for the 2016 Summer Olympics should be "the role of the federal government."

He also approves of the civic improvements that have taken place but wants to sustain that momentum into the future.

"Rio will have to look after the legacy of infrastructure, but it’s unclear who will run the sports centers after the Olympics."

Paes was also critical of FIFA in advance of next year’s World Cup, saying "they only care about stadiums."

FIFA Urges Brazil to Speed Up

Jerome Valcke warned Brazil to speed up construction of World Cup venues, claiming there is still "a lot of work to do" to complete some of the six stadia by the Dec. 31 deadline.

The FIFA secretary general wrapped up his latest host city tour by telling reporters at a press conference in Rio Thursday that world football's governing body was "more relaxed" about Brazil's World Cup preparations.

Valcke, who visited three World Cup cities in four days this week, emphasized that the launch of ticket sales on Tuesday meant there was now no question of changing any venues. Tickets are being sold for games in the 12 stadia.

"The time for talking about having 11, 12 or 10 stadiums is over. We will have 12 host cities and 12 stadiums," Valcke was quoted in an AP report.

"There is a limit of time. There are a few months to go, a few weeks to go to the end of December," he added, saying late delivery of stadia would impact the test events required to iron out some of the issues faced at the Confederations Cup. These included transport flows around stadia and crowd management.

Despite the anti-government protests that marred the World Cup warm-up competition and a few glitches in stadium operations, Valcke noted that Brazil's staging of the Confederations Cup had given FIFA more confidence in the country's organizational capabilities to host the 64-match tournament.

"It gives you the comfort to say that 'yes, there will be a successful World Cup,'" he said.

Written by Nick Devlin and Mark Bisson.

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