James Lawton: Brazilian blend of beauty and belief is ready to take on world
Independent
Brazil make their first appearance at the 2014 World Cup today and do so with a side capable of enhancing their reputation as the greatest footballing nation of them all
Published: 13 June 2014
In the gentle sunshine of late afternoon training most eyes, as always are on the “super-god” players of Brazil … Ronaldinho, “the gaucho,” who has a blue bandanna wrapped around his head; Ronaldo, wearing a loose top, the kind of garment, the cynical are saying, that a championship boxer wears while he works on flattening his gut before he has to step into the ring; the muscular Adriano, who would look like a fighter if stripped down to his toes; and the elegant Kaka.
But for once there may be a more compelling and significant sight than the almost formal skills displayed by the fabled “Magic Quartet”. Certainly, it is something that brings an insight into the heart of a football philosophy which has dominated and enchanted the world for nearly half a century.
A group of players, led by Lyon’s brilliantly consistent midfielder Juninho Pernambucano – men who can expect no more than a seat on the bench when Brazil launch their challenge for a sixth World Cup triumph against Croatia in Berlin tonight – are working on one of the most fundamental of tactics in the lexicon of their nation’s game.
It is keeping the ball among themselves, on this occasion while it is in the air. They are being observed by an assistant coach at some distance and, though they have a casual demeanour, they are aware of it.
Whenever the ball touches the ground, and at times the wait seems to impinge on eternity, the culprit shrugs his shoulders. And then he does 10 press-ups.
This is the statutory penalty for committing the ultimate crime in Brazilian football – giving up the ball to the opposition, needlessly.
For an English observer – sad to say, after the latest example of serially squandered possession in the opening game with Paraguay – it is a sudden, chilling look into another world of technical priorities.
For a Brazilian, of course, it a matter of religious practice. Catholics forswear meat on Fridays, orthodox Jews are fastidious about observing the sabbath, Muslims take off their shoes upon entering the mosque. Brazilians don’t give up the football. If they do, they have penance … press-ups. They have to atone, and in whatever temperature they find themselves. It is an aspect of their trade.
Mario Zagallo, with Franz Beckenbauer the only football man to have won a World Cup final as both a player and a coach, is 75 now and known as the “Old Wolf”. But if, as team manager, he welcomes every scientific and medical development that makes a great footballer functional to an optimum degree, he nevertheless says: “You can make footballers stronger and fitter, more aware of their bodies but in the end it all comes down to how well they can control the ball when it matters most. You name almost any Brazilian star you can think of, from any age, and you are talking about someone with perfect technique.
“It is something that has to be maintained if you want to keep your place at the top of football.”
There are other huge requirements, of course, and not the least of them is pride. Ronaldo, the hero of Brazil’s sixth World Cup triumph in Yokohama four years ago, is displaying a powerful streak of it as he seeks to rescue something from what many suspect are painful days of worry that his decline, physically and psychologically, has been pushed to a terminal point in the galactico circus of Real Madrid.
One result is a much publicised stand-off between the president of Brazil, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, and a man who four years ago would have walked any election from rat-catcher to Da Silva’s own office in Brasilia in the wake of his decisive contribution to the Brazilian triumph in Japan. Da Silva has issued a grovelling apology after Ronaldo’s fiercely indignant reaction to the president’s question – “is Ronaldo fat?” – in a video link-up with the team headquarters here. Ronaldo remains a privately seething figure at media suggestions that he is no longer the force that in two World Cups produced 11 goals – the third highest mark of all time, and just three goals off the record of Germany’s legendary Gerd “Der Bomber” Müller. “The press have a duty to report the truth, be more serious about their responsibilities,” he says going into a game which he believes can redefine his presence in a potentially great Brazilian team.
It may be that “the gaucho” is the more compelling figure now as he luxuriates, cheerfully, in his status as the world’s player of the year, but Ronaldinho is quick to say: “If we win, it will be because we are a team, and part of being a team is honouring our great players. Ronaldo has done so much for the team and I believe he can do still more.”
Ronaldo, of course, was recognised as the world’s best player three times and, as he approaches his 30th birthday, he insists that he retains the defiant belief that, despite the incriminating girth, he can push back his horizons one more time.
In the hills on the edge of the Black Forest he talks with rare passion about the work that is left to be done, both by Brazil and himself.
He says: “We can get better and we know we have to do that if we are to fulfil our one and simple goal … it is to win this World Cup. If you are me, or any Brazilian, anything else is failure. We did play well in 2002 – now we have to at least match that level of performance, taking our chances and trying to emulate what we did then. It is an important target for me to match Müller’s goals total, but more important is how the team does.
“I want to play a full part in helping the team to win another World Cup, and of course if I do that I will be delighted to break the scoring record, but it is not the No 1 priority. Regardless of what the press and the public say or think, the most important thing is that I have faith in my ability. You know, I have never doubted that for a minute.”
Given the roll-call of his achievement – he was taken to the 1994 World Cup in America as a 17-year- old who watched from the sidelines the combination of Romario and Bebeto leading Brazil to their fourth title – his palpable need to have an impact here is surprisingly intense. It is almost as though his extraordinary redemption in Japan from the 1998 final in Paris, when he suffered what some said was the stress-induced equivalent of a nervous breakdown, never happened.
“No, I don’t think it is true I have nothing left to prove. I don’t think you can ever get to that stage. Every day when you are playing in a match, even training, you always have something to prove. I don’t remember much about 1994, I was very young, but I do recall how hard I trained and tried to learn everything I would need to know if I was called up. But the coach we have now [Carlos Alberto Parreira] was in charge then, and he was very good, as he is today. Maybe tactically he is a bit more daring these days, which is good for the team we have.”
Parreira is emphatic that Ronaldo is still a key figure, and Robinho’s chances of forcing his way into the team will have to await damning evidence that the sharpness and the enduring touch of the great man – his team-mate at Real Madrid – have finally fled.
Says Parreira: “When people start questioning Ronaldo it is a great incentive for him. For me it will be a surprise and a disappointment if he does not have a great World Cup. In the national team a player is not just picked for what he’s doing at the moment but also for what he has done in the past. Few have done more for Brazilian football – and that is saying a lot.”
At the training ground Parreira’s tribute is not exactly short of definition. Zagallo, who was coach of arguably the greatest Brazilian team of all, the team that Pele led so gloriously in an unforgettable final against Italy in Mexico City in 1970, has a word with Tostao, the brilliantly subtle striker of that team.
Tostao had to fly to Houston in Texas for a critical eye operation before the start of the tournament, but when it mattered his vision was quite perfect. Now grey-haired men discuss some of the most tumultuous days of the greatest tradition football has ever known. Zagallo, a member of the winning teams of 1958 and 1962, took charge of the 1970 legends after their creator, the fiery Joao Saldanha, who was a journalist and formerly a biting critic of the team, was removed from office after visiting the home of a fierce critic of his own armed with a revolver.
Ronaldo is dealing with his own tormentors somewhat more philosophically. He says that he is bewildered by suggestions that his style is too close to that of his strike partner Adriano – “that makes no sense at all to me,” he says. “Yes we are similar players, but I don’t see why we can’t do well together. It is just a question of developing an understanding. In training I think you can see that we have that.”
It is true there a few tremors when the reserves beat their betters in a training game the other day, and reaction in some Brazilian quarters might have provoked Parreira’s fiery predecessor to extend his armoury to an elephant gun. Parreira merely pointed out that great Brazilian players tend to keep something back for when it matters. Then he believes they will not surrender anything cheaply – and not least, as we saw in the dying light, the ball.
