Sporting highs - Limerick can match Brazil

Contrasting sporting events of immense significance to all those involved take place today at opposite sides of the globe.

In Brazil, the football World Cup, one of the biggest spectacles of its kind, kicks off tonight. And in Limerick, 1,500 athletes from every part of the country will today be the stars at the launch of Special Olympics Ireland Games.

A veritable army of 3,000 volunteers worked tirelessly to make the Limerick games the best ever. Following today’s opening ceremony, generously supported by Limerick City of Culture 2014, an involvement that deserves to be applauded, the athletes will tomorrow start competing in Ireland’s special spectacle of sport.

Given the sheer enormity of the appalling poverty visible in every city, the Fifa organisers of the World Cup and the Brazilian government are hoping against hope that soccer will be the ultimate winner. After a year of street protests, tens of thousands of visiting fans are also praying for an end to violent demonstrations over the “squandering” of €8bn on stadiums and half-finished ventures instead of spending it on the country’s deep socials ills.

Meanwhile, Fifa is mired in controversy over alleged bribery to secure the world Cup for Qatar, a desert nation where players would face unbearable temperatures, a disaster in the making. Adding to its woes, Fifa’s 77-year-old president Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter is running for a fifth term of office.

And yet, despite these crises, millions of people will for the next month join in celebration of the World Cup spectacle.