Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s second-ranking official, expressed genuine shock about the amount of drunk people enjoying the World Cup at stadiums throughout Brazil.
In an interview with Brazil’s sports television network SporTV, [Valcke] acknowledged Monday that “maybe there were too many people who were drunk” at the matches and pointed to the connection between inebriation and violence.
Brazil banned alcohol sales at soccer matches in 2003 in a bid to curb fan violence. But Budweiser is a major World Cup sponsor and the tournament’s organizer, FIFA, insisted Brazil lift the ban in order to host the month-long event. Lawmakers opposed to lifting the ban delayed the passage of a World Cup law that gave FIFA financial and legal guarantees to organize the event, and the issue became a major source of friction between FIFA and Brazilian officials.
In a battle between safety and BIG BEER, you can go ahead and Sharpie in BIG BEER as the winner every single time. The deep and sudsy pockets of that industry yield incredible power.
There have been several instances of booze-fueled violence during the tournament. Valcke stressed the sale of in-stadium beer has never been a problem in previous World Cups (seems dubious).
FIFA’s inability to anticipate is really quite impressive. There was probably a good reason the country decided to eliminate the alcohol element from the equation over a decade ago. Common sense seems to suggest people are going to get good and drunk if beer is readily available.
Oh well. This shouldn’t be an issue when the 2022 World Cup in Qatar rolls around. Of course, literally everything else in the world will probably go wrong.