BRAZIL ATTRACT THE CROWDS

Carlos Alberto Parreira says the organizing panel of previous World Cup, which he himself was holding a vital position in, was not sure that people of Brazil will be interested in all the matches of the tournament.

As per Parreira, in Brazil, it’s not that people follow each and every player and each and every team. They love the game, but, they are very choosy in terms of the matches they watch.

So, while it was a no-brainer that there would be huge cues in front of the ticket booking counters for the matches the Selecao were going to be playing, the same was not expected for other matches - with one Pokies Palace review site saying that it expected to be as busy as ever over the rest of the tournament, and the organizers were even afraid that the stands might remain totally empty during the matches of the minnows.

But, to their surprise, more than three-fourth of the matches turned out to be sale-outs and even in those matches which were not quite the sale-outs, a decent attendance was registered.

Parreira said, “Honestly, we had not expected that kind of audience. Of course, it was always going to be a full house in the games involving the home side and some of the others, but, to see that happen in bulk of the matches actually was heart-warming and it’s not only the attendance in the stands, but, the atmosphere throughout the nation during that one month was absolutely fabulous with people celebrating the game of Soccer everywhere.”

“When you host world level tournaments, there is always going to be criticism for something or the other and we had some of that as well, but, mostly the feedbacks were positive and I think we can say that we did not stage the competition badly at all and we will fondly remember it in future.”