Brazil's Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo has warned travelling England fans of terrible local violence ahead of next summer's World Cup!
The staggering assessment of the true state of the country by a member of the government may make some travellers think again.
Rebelo is quoted by the Mirror: "As a country we want to be scrutinised and are sure that this will show more positives than negatives.
"But if we are comfortable with tragedies, with what happened in Sao Paulo (last week's stadium collapse) or the violence that is part of our daily lives, we are not comfortable with that.
"The issue of violence, we know it exists. We do not have the same safety conditions on the streets as in European cities."
Rebelo added: "We do have cases of violence in our cities, violence with social origins, common crime, robberies.
"This is something we are trying to fight against. We want to protect our population. Violence is harmful to our own people.
"Nobody will feel comfortable with this violence, with the "arrastao", the massed robberies, the rapes that happen.
"But this is a horrible fact. We are trying to contain this violence. We know our country may be harmed when this violence is seen by the world, as would any country where violence exists."
