SOCCER: 2014 WORLD CUP QUALIFYING DRAWS:Despite promises to the contrary, the government, not the private sector, is footing the bill for staging the global showpiece, writes TOM HENNIGAN

A FANATICAL Grêmio supporter, João Martius is exactly the sort of Brazilian fan you would expect to be ecstatic about his country staging a World Cup.

Only he is anything but. When the bigwigs who run Fifa gather today at an exclusive marina in Rio de Janeiro to make the draw for the 2014 tournament’s qualifying groups, João will be protesting outside against what he says is a World Cup that will exclude the country’s poor but passionate fans.

“Tickets are going to be expensive and this means that most ordinary fans here will not be able to get into games. As it is being organised, this will be a World Cup for the elite,” he says. “And the worst part is that, as taxpayers, we are going to be the ones paying for it.”

The protest is being organised by a local supporters’ group and is just the latest sign that there is rising anger at the fact promises that no public money would be used to rebuild the country’s dilapidated stadiums have fallen by the wayside.

In October 2007, when Brazil won the right to play host to the 20th edition of the World Cup, Ricardo Teixeira, the wily president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), promised publicly and repeatedly that the private sector would provide the financing to erect the 12 stadiums to the required Fifa standards.

But now the government’s own auditors estimate that 98.56 per cent of the €10 billion the country will be spend on the event will come from the public purse, including the vast majority of the financing for the new stadiums.

As many prophesised at the time Fifa awarded Brazil the right to hold the tournament, the promise of private investment turned out to be a Teixeira bluff.

He used it to win the government’s backing for his bid, betting that once Brazil was designated the host country the state would underwrite the revamp rather than face the national humiliation of having to back out as hosts. The strategy worked: Teixeira now has taxpayers funding his World Cup.

It is the biggest stroke yet by a man whose career is not short of them. Teixeira owes his rise to the top of the murky world of Brazilian football thanks to his marriage to the daughter of João Havelange, Fifa president between 1974 and 1998. With his father-in-law’s backing, he was elected president of the CBF in 1989 and is now serving a sixth consecutive term.

In that time he has survived numerous corruption scandals and congressional investigations to retain a vice-like grip on one of the game’s great cash cows – the Brazilian national team. He has used his control over the Seleção and where it plays in Brazil to buy support from politicians eager to hold its games in their districts, helping him create the so-called “football block” in Brazil’s congress, long a source of political protection.

Though many in the media remain highly critical of his management, Teixeira openly boasts of how he muzzled Rede Globo, Brazil’s biggest television network.

When one of its programmes accused him of corruption, he moved the kick-off of a match against Argentina to clash with its hugely popular nightly soap opera. The network was obliged to show the game and saw its prime-time advertising reduced to 15 minutes at half-time.

The network has since been muted in its criticism and Teixeira obliges by making sure televised mid-week games only kick-off after Globo’s main soap has aired at 10pm, long a source of frustration for fans attending matches.

It is an open secret that Teixeira sees 2014 as the crowning achievement of what will by then be a quarter-century in charge of Brazilian football and wants to use a successful tournament as a springboard to follow in his father-in-law’s footsteps and become president of Fifa when Sepp Blatter steps down in 2015.

He can probably count on the support of his former father-in-law to do so. Havelange remained an ally of Teixeira even after he divorced his daughter and married a woman three decades younger. As one of the preeminent names in football and the Olympic movement, Havelange still has great influence with the committee men who chose Fifa presidents.

Now that taxpayers find themselves on the financial hook for Teixeira’s ambitions, construction costs are spiralling. The hoarding around the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro says the massive refurbishment under way is costing €315 million. But that is already out of date. Inside, the chief executive of the company in charge of the legendary ground’s transformation says the current estimate is €410 million.

Though work has barely started on the stadium in Sao Paulo, the budget has gone from the original €157 million projected last year to north of €400 million.

The fear is that as the tournament gets closer the pressure to have stadiums ready will see cost controls loosened.

“The cost overruns will only get worse,” says journalist Juca Kfouri, perhaps the most prominent critic of Teixeira and corruption in Brazilian football.

“There will be delays and a knife will be held to the government’s chest demanding more money in order to avoid national embarrassment.”

The government says it is fully mobilised to ensure this does not happen, and argues that, with stadium specs having been finally agreed with Fifa, it does not expect any more budget revisions.

But many remain sceptical, especially after the government previously endorsed a bid that was based on no public money in stadiums. It is hard to believe it did not know Teixeira was bluffing.

But the government is using the World Cup and Olympics two years later to herald Brazil’s arrival as a major world power.

The events have drawn global attention to the country’s remarkable growth over the last decade.

But politicians might have had grubbier motives for buying Teixeira’s bluff. “This all exposes the cosy relationship between government and big construction companies,” says Kfouri. “They are major campaign contributors to politicians, who then shower them with public money for infrastructure projects.”

“We do not know who will be the champion on the field of play in 2014, but we can already say that the big winners are Brazil’s builders,” says opposition senator Alvaro Dias. “There has been an inversion of priorities. The public health system in Brazil is in chaos due to a lack of money, meanwhile we are spending heavily on a party for the few.”

In 2001, Dias led one of the congressional inquiries into the CBF that resulted in numerous accusations of corruption that Teixeira has since managed to dodge. The senator is forthright about the man in charge of organising the biggest sporting occasion on earth: “Teixeira does not have the moral authority or credibility to command an event as important as the World Cup.”

Fifa thinks otherwise, and he is its local point-man, in charge of the all-powerful local organising committee which he has packed with family and friends. Despite it putting up most of the tournament’s investment capital, the government has no one on the committee, which along with Fifa will collect all the profits.

This is in marked contrast to the 2016 Olympic Games. The government sits on its organising committee and will receive 40 per cent of profits. Teixeira has said profits from the World Cup will go towards supporting the game in Brazil. But how they are spent is entirely at his discretion.

Supporting the game might mean more funding for grassroots football. Or it could mean another private jet for CBF executives. And thanks to a change in Brazilian law demanded by Fifa, all profits will be tax-free.

“The organisation of the Olympic Games is by no means perfect in terms of transparency. But it is a million times better compared to Teixeira’s organising of the World Cup,” says Michel Castellar, an investigative reporter with sports newspaper Lance!, which has sought to unravel the 2014 money trail.

“It is impossible to get information about anything involving the local organising committee, such as how it chose the company organising this weekend’s qualifying draw. We have no idea what is happening.”

This lack of transparency on the part of the CBF and Teixeira has long been associated with the workings of Fifa. But following the bribery scandal that rocked the organisation this year, Blatter has promised major changes.

A genuine reform movement would be a threat to Teixeira’s ambitions. As well as the multiple accusations levelled against him in Brazil, earlier this year the BBC’s Panorama programme reported that he took bribes in the 1990s from the now defunct Swiss sports marketing company ISL, which managed the World Cup distribution rights. He is closely identified with Fifa’s old guard.

But all this might be overlooked after a successful – and profitable – tournament in three years.

For many Brazilian fans it presents a dilemma. Even most of those who have joined the online Fora Teixeira!’(Teixeira Out!) campaign still want their country to stage a successful World Cup, just not one organised by the CBF boss.

But his tenacity, combined with Fifa’s jealous guarding of its autonomy and the government’s desire to impress when the eyes of the world are on it, means whichever captain lifts Fifa’s trophy on July 13th, Teixeira is likely to be standing close by and possibly with an eye on an even bigger prize.

The Lowdown in Rio de Janeiro

When?The 2014 World Cup will kick off on Thursday, June 12th, and reach its climax 32 days later on Sunday, July 13th. With Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere, this means a second winter World Cup.

Fans travelling in the hope of tropical sunshine will be rudely surprised if their team plays in Brazil’s southern cities, where winter temperatures can drop to single digits. Most host cities will be four hours behind Ireland.

Where?Brazil is spreading its World Cup across 12 cities: Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte in the southeast; Brasilia and Cuiaba in the centre; Manaus in the Amazon; Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza and Natal in the sunny northeast and Curitiba and Porto Alegre in the south.

This involves some huge distances between venues – there are over 3,000km between Porto Alegre and Manaus, greater than the distance between Dublin and Istanbul.

Final Venue?The final will be played at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro. The mythical stadium is undergoing a complete refurbishment and when ready will seat around 80,000.

That is less than half the number of people who are estimated to have crowded in for the last game of the 1950 World Cup. Needing just a draw to be crowned champions, Brazil lost 2-1 to Uruguay in an upset still remembered as the Maracanazo.

Opening Game?With Rio having cornered the final, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Brasilia and Salvador are fighting it out for the right to stage the opening ceremony and first game.

As Brazil’s biggest city Sao Paulo is desperate to get the showpiece event and authorities are sinking over €400 million into a brand new stadium in the hope of doing so.

But Belo Horizonte hopes CBF boss Ricardo Teixeira will award the event to the capital of his native state.

Tickets?Fifa is waiting until stadiums are ready before finalising ticketing policy, but says it does not expect prices to be much higher than those in South Africa last year, when the average price of locally-sold tickets was €100.

Fifa’s demand that Brazil pass a law ceding it sweeping control over the event’s organisation means the Brazilian law guaranteeing students half-price tickets will most likely not apply for the World Cup.

Favourites?The bookies have the hosts as favourites to win in 2014 and the pressure on the Seleção from home fans will be immense.

After a poor Copa America, many have already lost faith in Mano Manezes, the coach given the task of moulding a promising crop of players into a World Cup-winning squad.

There could be a lot of chopping and changing between now and Brazil’s next competitive matches – the 2013 Confederations Cup.

The Republic of Ireland are 150 to 1.