Brazil demands money for sending football team

PANAJI: Much of the success of the forthcoming Lusofonia Games to be hosted by Goa revolves around one major discipline - football. When you have Brazil and Portugal as part of ACOLOP (Associacao dos Comites Olimpicos de Lingua Oficial Portuguesa), it is only natural to pin the success of the Games on the participation of these two teams in football.
But even as the government races against time to complete the various projects by November 2 when the Games open, Brazil, it is believed, continues to have a gun - so to speak - pointed at the organizers' head. The Brazilians are demanding appearance money to send a football team to Goa.
A few days ago, Lusofonia Games CEO Keshav Chandra led a three-member team to Macau, the headquarters of ACOLOP, to inform the executive committee about the progress on infrastructure and other issues with regards to the Games.
"We have requested the Brazil representative, Bernard Rajzman, a former sports minister and an Olympic volleyball hero, to get the football association to send a football team but he insisted they want to be paid to send a football team.
I did not take the discussion further as we don't have money to pay for appearance or whatever they would call it," said Chandra.
It was also learnt that the main reason for the delegation's visit to Macau was to formally propose for the postponement of the Games by a month. Chandra denied that any such proposal had been made but did say that the government would take a call on the subject only at the end of September.
Chandra said the visa issue, one of the major hurdles, had more or less been sorted out in the Capital on his return from Macau. "I met the joint secretary of the home ministry and sorted out the visa issue yesterday. We discussed how we could work on it and they were very helpful and forthcoming," said Chandra.