Vladimir Putin is not yet in Brazil. The Russian president is not announced in Rio de Janeiro before Sunday July 13, 2014, the day of the World Cup final at the Maracana stadium. But his name already comes up regularly in conversations. To the point of eclipsing some of the presents.
Officially, Vladimir Putin must attend the World Cup final. He will be one of the distinguished guests. And one of the busiest personalities of the day. He will wear a double hat, Olympic and football. One eye towards the IOC, another towards FIFA. Not easy, but it takes more to disturb the Russian leader.
On the Olympic side, Vladimir Putin must symbolically hand over the white flag bearing the five rings to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes. A traditional ceremony for the transmission of the Olympic emblem, the precise framework and decorum of which are still unknown. It could be held in the VIP box at the Maracana stadium, on the sidelines of the World Cup final. Or, another option considered, in the Russia House built in Rio to promote the country and its sporting events.
On the football side, the Russian president must meet Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, for another form of passing on the baton, from one World Cup to another, from Brazil 2014 to Russia 2018. Once again, the meeting is symbolic and the purely formal gesture.
Above all, Vladimir Putin will take advantage of his trip to Brazil to pose as a champion of organization and punctuality. Faced with the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, undermined by delays in the work and criticism from international sports institutions, he will be able to puff out his chest for having set up in Sochi, last winter, the decor without visible hitch for the Olympic Games hailed as the most successful in history. Facing Dilma Rousseff, he will be able to boast of preparing for a 2018 World Cup where the word delay might never be uttered.
Vladimir Putin and his Minister of Sports, Vitaly Mutko, detailed it very recently in a document published on the Kremlin website: the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia is already on the right track. Russia must present 12 stadiums, spread across 11 cities. Five of them are already almost complete. It must also prepare 113 training sites and 64 places of residence. “They will be ready well before the deadline,” the minister promised.
Another file: the establishment of a football development program in Russia. The Russian Federation wants to take advantage of the 2018 World Cup to boost the practice and strengthen its offer in equipment and infrastructure. She recently presented a vast “2020 plan”, the priority of which is to provide the country with thousands of new, lit and sometimes heated pitches. Total cost of the operation: 6,9 billion dollars, or around 5 billion euros. Not cheap, Putin would have suggested. But he spent ten times more on the Sochi Games.
