To be hated by Ricardo Teixeira is not a privilege enjoyed by only a few people. Nonetheless, Juca Kfouri certainly tops the list. The 61-year old São Paulo born Mr. Kfouri, a writer for the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, UOL website and pundit for ESPN, has taken into stride the habit of being sued by CBF’s big boss. “I don’t let anything concerning him go away easily” says Teixeira about Kfouri in his polemic profile published by the Piauí magazine in July of this year.

According to Kfouri, all the powers accumulated by Teixeira in his positions as president of both CBF and COL (Local Organizing Committee for the 2014 World Cup) have led the man not to be so admired by (Brazil’s) president Dilma Rousseff. “I know and he knows that Dilma doesn’t have any affection for him.”

In this interview, the journalist pities that football players have been turning into “rock stars”, talks about his problems with former president Lula, foresees changes in Fifa’s structure (but not in Brazilian football mandatory boards), and says that, despite having conditions to host the World Cup, Brazil has turned into a “party for construction contractors and top advertisement agencies”, given the megalomania concerning to the event.

Juca Kfouri: More than fifty, according to his own count. I lost twice, won about thirty-five times and perhaps ten or twelve lawsuits are still in progress. Last week three summonses arrived. If I write now that he has become a comely sixty-year old, he would sue me arguing I’m suggesting he is gay.

JK: I would define him as parachutist, a man who came from nowhere, whose father-in-law (João Havelange, Fifa’s president from 1974 to 98) put him in control of this body and who has been succeeding in playing with the rules of the game so as to keep himself in power for twenty-two years. And we will have him in charge until, at least, 2015.

JK: In France, the president of the organizing committee of the 1998 World Cup was not the local federation president. It was Michel Platini, at that time the greatest ever player in French football history. The 2006 World Cup was led by Franz Beckenbauer. Is it just not possible that we have in Brazil someone who is internationally respected to occupy this position? Must it really be CBF’s president, who will, even further, put his own daughter as the executive-secretary, his own lawyer as the Legal Director and his press assessor and the media director as media director in COL? Couldn’t it be some person as a Gerdau, a Antonio Ermírio de Moraes, a Moreira Sales (respectively, two famous Brazilian industrials and a banker)?

JK: The government is colluding and a hostage to this situation. Lula was the president who enacted the Supporters’ Estatutes (Estatuto do Torcedor) and Sports Reform Law (Lei de Moralização do Esporte), very generously, we may say, as these acts were approved in Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s time as president. When this law was signed, Lula declared that we would never again watch journalist Juca Kfouri say that the fans are treated like cattle. Myself, aged 52 at the time, and with no right to being naïve, left the event in Brasília filled with happiness inside the cab on my way to the airport. They have elected the guy who likes sports and does not like “them”, I thought. Six months later, he (Lula) and Teixeira were arm in arm organizing that friendly match between Brazil and Haiti.

JK: CBF is a mixed-capital entity, with public and private money in it, but public interest lies on it and that is consecrated in the Brazilian Federal Constitution. This is true to the point that football is considered a national cultural patrimony and (theoretically) under the surveillance of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Such argument was used in order to avoid the set up of those two Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry (CPI), the CBF and Nike ones, under the grounds that a private entity could not be investigated by the National Congress. So, does that mean there could not be a CPI about the practices of the banks in Brazil? They use the argument that sports entities are autonomous, but such autonomy is equivalent to that existent for the Brazilian universities, and not even universities supersede the rule of law. Acting as if CBF and Fifa are is tantamount to granting a license to be corrupt.

JK: It is rather impressive. He has got the World Cup in his hands to manage, but I think he has been less full of himself lately: President Dilma Rousseff does not welcome him in her office and that must surely bother him. Both I and he know that she does not have any affection for Teixeira. Now, as Andrew Jennings (a British journalist for BBC that has been investigating Fifa’s corrupt practices for years) says, the Brazilian government has a great opportunity to put Itamaraty (Brazil’s Foreign Relations Ministry) as an interested party in Fifa’s matter in Switzerland. Because, if this document ever comes to be disclosed publicly, proving that Teixeira and João Havelange really received bribery from ISL (Swiss company responsible for sports marketing and that dealt broadcasting rights for Fifa), the case will change course. How can someone who would have paid a fine and returned the bribe money and, hence, confessed to receiving it, be in the position to organize a World Cup? The Brazilian government is entitled to go to court and request a breach of confidentiality. Maybe not even to disclose the document to the public, but to at least act about it.

JK: Switzerland has earned a bad reputation for being victim of that image as a tax heaven, something which has been changing over the years due to international pressure against weapons and drug smuggling. The IOC (International Olympic Committee), for instance, has undergone cleaning process after the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics vote buying scandals. Fifa is following the same path. After the action taken by the British against it, Fifa shall never be the same. It will go under a cleaning process. Fifa will never be the same again after its recent presidential elections, when matters came to the point of Mr. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, publicly calling the Fifa election a farce.

JK: It’s evident that Brazil is capable of hosting a World Cup. South Africa hosted the World Cup, so why not Brazil? Now, we can have Brazil’s World Cup and not Germany’s World Cup in Brazil. The Germans have an economy that absorbed the big impact of the construction works. We have other priorities. A symbol of this situation is the mockery that has been happening in São Paulo. How is it possible to say that a stadium such as the Morumbi cannot be the stadium of a city that will host a month long-event with six or seven games? It is not the ideal stadium, but it is the possible stadium. With all the reforms it would go under, it could well host the Cup. The richest country on Earth, the Untied States, did not build a single stadium for the 1994 World Cup, all they did was adapt baseball and American football stadiums. There is nothing which could justify new São Paulo stadiums for the Cup, as well as Brasilia’s, Cuiaba’s and Manaus’. We are hosting a party for all the big construction contractors and top advertisement agencies.

JK: It makes no sense whatsoever that Corinthians should receive any fiscal incentives to have its stadium. “Oh, but São Paulo (the football club) also had incentives to have the Morumbi built”. A mistake shouldn’t make up for another mistake. Also, when it is said that this money is to build what will serve as a development booster for the poorest region in town, I counter argue with the opinion held by many urbanity specialists from around the globe, that have stated that it is not true that a sports arena means a development factor for a region. The practical example is Soccer City, in Soweto, South Africa’s main stadium. As we also have the Engenhão, in Rio, built for the Pan-American games in 2007. The Engenhão has not improved the surrounding area. This argument is a demagogic lie.

JK: No, I don’t. For instance: when you have an (apparently differentiated) individual in the business, such as Santos’ president (Luís Álvaro Ribeiro) and you see him in love with Teixeira. There is no sign of change around here, there are more changes coming in Fifa than in Brazil. Telê Santana (a famous Brazilian coach) used to say that football is not for serious folks.

JK: I think it has gone a bit over the top. Unfortunately capitalism has won, it is an unstoppable trend. Now, the most popular sport in the world is increasingly becoming a sport for rich people. The stadiums are becoming “pasteurized studios”. I am favourable to comfort for the fans, but that has been increasing the costs so much that it’s distancing the simple folk who gave that shine, that spirit to the stadiums. Excluding these people is killing your own constituency. Because then you have these guys, that are every day less footballers and more pop stars. Each day, you have less of Sócrates or Zicos, and more rock singers. Covering the World Cup nowadays is daily becoming closer to covering a rock concert.