User:Fgallegos8/sandbox

The 2014 World Cup hosted in Brazil was controversial since the beginning. Brazilian residents were unhappy with the amount of public money spent in order to build stadiums and other necessary facilities to host the World Cup. Many protests were held by citizens claiming poor financial management from the Brazilian government. Furthermore, there were additional issues with regard to safety, misconduct, and officiating with underperformance referees.

Safety was a major issue for the world cup. Under the construction of multiple stadiums, eight workers died in a fire. Additionally, there was an unstable makeshift staircase at the Maracanã Stadium, a collapse in a frequently used monorail, and an unfinished overpass in Belo Horizonte due to funds being allocated on Stadiums.

The 2014 World Cup also faced numerous disciplinary cases such as Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez biting an Italian player, Giorgio Chiellini during a game, or Portuguese player, Pepe head-butting the German player Thomas Müller. Some of these disciplinary actions raised concerns in the poor judgment that referees would conduct during games.

As part of the underperformance referees claims, various speculations of the World Cup being rigged started to raise. Many referee mistakes we crucial for a lot of countries to pass to the next stage. Some of the referee mistakes include Russia vs Algeria: laser used against Russian goalkeeper, Netherlands vs Mexico erroneous penalty call against Mexico, Juan Camilo Zuniga fault to Neymar resulting in a serious injury , and multiple penalty calls that were avoided in the 2014 final Argentina vs Germany.

All this incidents were key clues for further investigation in the bribery scandal.