The Workers’ Party presidents – first Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, then Rousseff – believed that holding the world’s two most important sporting events within a two-year period would mark Brazil’s emergence as a rising world power, serving as a kind of “coming out party.” And their logic was sound, if a little arrogant; only two other countries – Mexico and Germany – can count a back-to-back World Cup and Olympic Games among their achievements.