In the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo, isolated acts of violence marred an otherwise peaceful protest against the country’s staging of this year’s football World Cup.<br /><br />Protesters rocked an empty police car as they tried to overturn it. TV pictures showed another powerful image as a Volkswagen Beetle became engulfed in flames.<br /><br />In Rio, police prevented protesters from breaking into a shopping mall on Saturday evening. <br /><br />The trouble came at the end of the year’s first major rally against the billions spent on hosting the tournament.<br /><br />Some “black block” anarchists were among the marchers in Sao Paulo earlier in the day.<br /><br />The overall number was only a fraction of the 20,000 who had signed up on Facebook to attend.<br /><br />But their protest remains loud.<br /><br />“The World Cup year will be a year of struggle. I think that in the run-up to the tournament, we will have a lot of fights and many demonstrations. And this all reflects what happened last June,” said demonstrator Filipe Alencar.<br /><br />During the World Cup’s dress rehearsal tournament the Confederations Cup last year, more than a million Brazilians joined protests against high public transport fares, poor public services and political corruption.<br /><br />This time the numbers in Rio de Janeiro and other cities were in the hundreds.<br /><br />But it shows that frustration remains over what protesters see as the not-so-beautiful game.
