Topics: FiFA World Cup, World Cup 2014, Brazil

On Monday, a group of protesters came together in front of Rio’s Linx Hotel, where 22 out of the 23 players on Brazil’s squad were supposed to meet with Scolari. Due to recent Champions League victory, Marcelo was given an extra day of rest.

Before the team left for their traditional training ground since 1987 in Granja Comary, the protesters were more than 100. They attached stickers on the team’s bus and chanted: 

“There will be no World Cup, there will be a strike.” 

The abovementioned slogan transcribed on a sign

The demonstrators, mostly teachers, began protesting on May 12, and demand better pay and working conditions. The workers cannot idly watch their government splurge millions of dollars on a 4 week event, while the population is starving to death.

Just last year World Cup protests peaked in Brazil when 100000 people took the streets of Rio

At the training grounds, together with the journalists and the fans, hundreds of more protesters were waiting for the team.

Fans attaching stickers on the bus driving the Selecao to their training ground

Meanwhile, Brazil's football star and Fifa World Cup ambassador Ronaldo blames the government for the delays, in an attempt to distract the masses from focusing the negativity on the World Cup. The former Brazil's legend stated:

“This is what people should understand: it's down to governments. The governments they have elected. It's nothing to do with football or the World Cup.”

Protesters kept slowing down Brazil's bus on the way to Granja Comary

Just like with Australia's Aborigines during the Olympics, or the township dwellers in South Africa in 2010, it seems that competitions like the World Cup come at a price that is much higher than what should be tolerated.

Demonstrators stand in front of the building site for a stadium in Brazil