"Sabotaging the 2014 World Cup is sabotaging Brazil."

By Eduardo Guimarães, exclusively for Brasil 247

I must confess that I don't like football – which, in Brazil, is almost heresy. Even so, despite being an exception, I don't have a favorite team, I don't support any, I don't understand the schedules, the rules, etc., because I've never been interested in understanding them.

The time, money, and energy that this nation spends on football should be better used. But one fact is undeniable: Brazilians, especially the most humble, find solace in this sport a way to cope with the hard lives they lead.

Hosting international events as important as a World Cup or the Olympic Games, however, is another matter entirely. Such events can showcase a country's organizational and project execution capabilities.

However, such events can also internationally discredit a country if, in organizing them, it experiences organizational failure.

The damage to a country's image when it fails to organize an international event as important as a World Cup, contrary to what many might think, does not fall on the government responsible for such organization, but on that country itself.

Governments come and go, countries remain. If the "There will be no World Cup" movement triumphs, in the future those who will be known worldwide for the event's failure will not be Lula, Dilma Rousseff, or the PT (Workers' Party), but Brazil itself.

This country, in that case, would be forever marked by its inability to organize international events. It would be considered a wild country, unsuitable for tourism, incapable of carrying out a project that so many nations have already managed to make a success of.

What will Brazil gain by sabotaging its own image in the eyes of the world? Nothing.

The investments in the World Cup have already been made and will not be undone by any outcry. The only thing that will fail to happen, if this reckless movement succeeds, is the national reward for the investments made – both in terms of image and finances.

Who benefits from sabotaging the event? The people certainly won't gain anything.

Beyond the pain that the overwhelming majority of Brazilians who love football will feel in the face of a defeat forged in the predictable psychological state of dejection of the team in the face of the protests, there will be the economic and reputational damage to the country.

But there would be winners from the failure of the World Cup, yes: the politicians without votes who see in these demonstrations the only possibility of winning the presidential election against Dilma Rousseff's strong candidacy for re-election.

You, the average citizen, would be left with the international disgrace of your country, and the likely worsening of your life that an economic downturn caused by this disgrace would generate – which would even jeopardize your job, your business, etc.

Over the past decade, you have started earning higher salaries, your children have been able to enter the job market more easily, and poverty in the country has plummeted. With such international events, Brazil will show the world that its time has come.

But you can risk all of that so that cunning politicians – without votes – can come to power thanks to a farce, that the country invested money in the World Cup that should have been destined for health, education, etc.

Yes, it's a farce. The public money invested in the World Cup is a fraction of the total investment. Almost all of these resources are private. And such investments, public or private, will be paid for by the profits from tourism and increased economic activity resulting from the event.

The question that remains, therefore, is very simple: what, in fact, will Brazil gain from the sabotage of the World Cup, now championed by 9 out of 10 columnists and editorial writers of this major media outlet that opposes the federal government?

If you haven't asked yourself this question, it's time to do so. If you can't answer it and can't find a clear answer, your obligation, as a Brazilian citizen, will be to combat this reckless, senseless, and senseless movement.