Opinion – Juca Kfouri: It’s still an initial look, but between São Paulo and Doha the difference is the material

São Paulo is the so-called stone jungle, insensitive, capable of having borders between Paraisópolis and Morumbi, with exploited and explorers sharing the same space, one with an open sewer, the other with heated swimming pools.

And buildings, buildings and more buildings, like a competition to see who gets closer to heaven, or farther from the hell of its sidewalks, increasingly inhabited by hungry people with nowhere to live.

Doha is a jungle of steel and glass, with no borders between poverty and wealth, because the poor, the immigrant workers, are really excluded, condemned to live on the periphery and pray to have their passports returned by the bosses.

It’s absurd to hold the biggest football party in a place like this, in addition to the prohibitive heat.

But the Olympics were held in Berlin under the yoke of Hitler, in 1936. The World Cup was held under the cruel Argentine dictatorship, in 1978.

Qatar closes a cycle or, hopefully, will close a cycle: South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Qatar have little or no social control in common, in addition to fragile democracies, cases of Africa and Brazil, despite being resistant as seen; and the 2018 and this year’s hosts are as far from democratic regimes as the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Doha does not embrace it, as do Barcelona, ​​Rome, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Cape Town and St. Petersburg, to name a few cities that hosted World Cup matches.

The capital of Qatar just wants to impress the outsider, to show how in less than 50 years a city was built in the middle of the desert —imposing, impressive without a doubt, exhibitionist, ostentatious to the point of being corny.

Aside from the numerous restrictions for religious reasons, Doha seems to be the ideal kind of city for types like João Agripino Doria —clean, with a gold watch, gold bracelet, gold necklace.

Doha wanted the Cup to show itself and, although it hasn’t even started, now it hopes it will end soon, because this bunch of strangers that arrived doesn’t adorn the city that you see permanently in the mirror. Doha can’t wait for these people to leave.

WHAT ABOUT FOOTBALL?

Football starts this Sunday (22), with the hosts receiving Ecuador, a game incapable of making any hearts beat faster, except for those of the litigants.

There is a certain optimism in the desert air for the team’s harmony and for having toughened up games against Canada, to whom it lost 2-0, Chile, with whom it drew 2-2, Andean goals by Arturo Vidal and Alexis Sánchez. Then they beat Guatemala and Honduras, 2-0 and 1-0, which is not really an advantage, although it is always good to remember that the Hondurans defeated and eliminated the Brazilian team by 2-0, in the quarterfinals of the Cup América 2001, months before the fifth championship.

So, before the upset was consummated, and consumed a good part of the trust that the fans had in Felipão, there was a journalist who promised to become a chef if the Brazilians were defeated. The day after the promise, he won a chef’s hat from his partner, who shared the program with him (not to be confused with the former coach of Atlético Mineiro, please!).

Luckily for the palates of São Paulo, the promise was not fulfilled, nor did the hat ever appear on his head, which insists on making guesses.

Ecuador will win.