Not talking about Messi, and yes about the team of choice, the pathetic mixture of RM + Barcelona only players plus Garcia.
It's about 5 hours from car, 2 and 1/2 hour is a physical impossibility. The train stuff, is still far away in the future.
Yes I am from there.
Some good points are the cultural, culinary, night life diversity. Variety to all tastes in these areas. Lots of museums (in the wealthy areas) many free, with a huge variety of themes, culinary from many places of the world and from another states (although can be very expensive in the fancier restaurants, richer areas), huge number of night clubs with plenty of variety of music.
An area that it is average is the number of public sportive facilities. You can find a decent number of public basketball and football fields to play in parks. But don't expect to find tennis courts to play, with a few exceptions (and nearly always with another people to share with). There are, of course private courts, but as with many things here, it is expensive.
The city is close the several cities in the coast (São Paulo actually has sea view and ends at sea level, bot nobody lives in these places), where you can spend weekends and holidays if you have a car. The cost is affordable if a careful research of hotels is made. This in December and January the high season, in other months is even better like February to May. In these times the water is still warm and from the end February or beginning of March until middle may the rain diminishes dramatically while the water keeps nice and the cities get emptier. The closest cities are about 1 hour driving, the farthest away 2 and 1/2h. On the new year and carnaval, however, costs arises exponentially, plus the traffic in the highways becomes unbearable
The bad points are the overall ugliness of the city (not really in the richer areas, but most city has ugly architecture, bad painting of the buildings, too many energy wires in nearly everywhere, favelas aren't pretty and homeless people that generates garbage around them isn't either). It was worst a few years ago until the former mayor was able to approve a law that limited large size advertising posters from the trade, and banned it in buildings and another places, this made a big difference in the central area, mainly.
The public transportation is bad overall, too many traffic make the buses run slowly overall in the first half of the morning and at the end of afternoon, beginning of night.
Many bus lines are too crowded in these periods. But all depends from where you live and to where you go. There are many good ones too. The city needs more exclusive bus lanes. Let's see what the new administration that is beginning now does in the next four years.
Subway covers an area too limited, which make it too crowded in the periods that I mentioned. This together with the bad education of the general population slowdowns the trains due to people that secure the doors to enter in already too crowded trains, forcing all trains behind it to stop until it can continue.
The trains are too slow and there are too few of them, which make the long daily travels of the unfortunate people that leaves the extremes of the city, or leave the peripheral cities to work in the central area have to endure fairly long travels standing up, which makes for a very educated dispute for the train seats.
The pollution (air pollution due to the excess of cars, the main rivers are polluted and smell badly) is bothersome.
The climate is subtropical, so not cold neither very hot. In the winter you probably has about ten days on average in which the temperature falls below 10°C in most of the city.
On the summer temperature regularly goes in the inferior 30°.
Due to his altitude in most city (650-800 meters), the nights are fresher than in most state capitals, which makes easier to sleep at night (not in this year unfortunately)
The drivers don't respect much pedestrians, although it improved a bit with a new traffic education campaign that started last year.
By last, the city is absurdly expensive. It's more expensive than New York or London last time I saw.
Quite a few negative points, right
. This is an overall view of here, taking into account the life of 11 million of it's inhabitants. It's a big city in a undeveloped country. For you, I guess it all depends to where you will live and work. Depending on it's place, it might be easy to avoid most of the downfalls and enjoy the good points, making it a worthy experience.