Game theory

There are carnivals and then there are carnivals. The FIFA World Cup 2014 is one such worldwide outpouring of euphoria that can only described in gladiatorial passions for sport, spectacle and symbolic bloodlust. With host Brazil taking on Croatia in the opening match in Sao Paolo in a stadium whose match-readiness is under scanner, mixed feelings are doing the rounds in the global circuits of enthusiasm and merchandise. FIFA, with its supranational corporate thrust, has evidently sold a dream to the emerging economy that is Brazil, with Sepp Blatter, its tainted supremo already on the verge of a controversial re-election, equating the World Cup protests in the country and elsewhere with ‘racism’. One on hand, there are ‘unfinished’ and untested stadia which have cost millions of dollars on a sport that can be easily be dubbed as Brazil’s national game, demonstrations and graffiti depicting hungry kids given a football instead of food, decrepit favelas hidden behind barricades guarding scintillating hotels, airports and sporting arenas, flooding alerts and concerns over tourist overload, governmental aggression towards dissenters, doddering public transportation in big cities, and the self-indulgence of a global elite clique that will throng the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, taking them out of bounds for the teeming millions of Brazil. On the other hand, the sporting event will bring together billions of football aficionados from all over the world, who would watch the spectacle unfold on television screen, whether large or small, and ignite deep-seated passions for game and gore. There will be blood (metaphorical, at least) and there will be daggers drawn as the veterans England, France, Spain, Germany, Portugal and Italy take on relative newcomers like Algeria, Iran, Russia and the Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nationalism has been remapped on football, which is more than a religion for millions of fans the world over, and it’s time to see the armies of passion clash against each other. Caveats aside, the game must go on.