Beyond the World Cup's Cushy FIFA Bubble, Real Life Goes On

MANAUS, Brazil — If you spend enough time in FIFA's air-conditioned World Cup media center, where bean-bag chairs let you stretch your back and the Wi-Fi is good and plentiful and everyone has a smartphone and a laptop and a fancy digital camera, if you spend enough time bullshitting with other journalists and tourists from England and Italy and the United States, you can almost forget the absurdity of where you are and the contradictions surrounding your being here

You can almost forget three workers died building the Arena da Amazonia, the massive $300 million structure where you're stationed. You can almost forget that stadium was built in Manaus, a city with no major soccer team that can realistically come anywhere near filling the place after it hosts the four World Cup matches it was built for Read more...