Next time you’re out driving, look around and focus on what you’re seeing. Then try to remember what you saw two or three years ago. Probably a lot less. Narrower roads, fewer hotels and office blocks, certainly no underground railway stations or beautiful new soccer stadia. There are more cellphone base stations, and more underground telecoms cables, which inflicted some short-term carnage to the roads and pavements.

Bit by bit, the whole country has been prepared for the 2010 Fifa World Cup.