Halftime for the Brazilian press:

The vicious cycle of impunity

When theWorld Cup kicks off in Brazil tomorrow, the government of President Dilma Rousseff will be celebrating the country’s emergence as a global powerhouse. The event, to be staged at sites across the country, will put the nation’s vast and diverse territory on display, unlike the Olympics, which Brazil is hosting two years later in just one city, Rio de Janeiro. While the 2012 murder of a local soccer journalist in central-western Goiânia may run counter to the official narrative of success, it reflects the disparate realities of a country as immense as Brazil, and depicts a darker side of “the beautiful game.”