The Survivor And The Stubborn Patriarch

RIO DE JANEIRO

Sporting a haircut to end all football haircuts, Ronaldo --  the survivor -- brought Brazil thevictory that four years ago was stripped from its over-confident soul. After three spectacular breaks in thefirst, the Inter Milan striker took advantage of a loose rebound to put the Selection ahead. Shortlythereafter, he sealed Brazil's victory when breaking free from a scramble just outside of the penalty zone.

Luiz Felipe Scolari, Felipao or Big Phil, had been criticized for stubbornly molding the Selection in themode of an Italian-Brazilian agrarian patriarch. Brushing aside national pressure with the agility of one ofthe 4Rs, including President Cardoso's own, he doggedly left out of this year's selection the saving grace ofBrazil's leading scorer Romario, star of the 1994 championship team.

With an ironsmith's impassibility, he hammered together a team made up of mainly poor kids turned intointernational stars in high-paying European clubs, but who, in the process, had forgotten the collectiveprinciples of the Beautiful Game. In doing so effectively, Big Phil welded back a nation and their team in theaftermath of the mysterious fit Ronaldo had suffered in Paris. The ensuing investigation of his relationshipwith Nike led to a debacle in Brazil's professional football associations, clearing him, but exposing a fieldbelow the pitch of secret bank accounts, tax fraud and illegal commissions.

Yet by June 30, Brazil had become the favorites to win the final of the 2002 World Cup. It saw theSelection meet Germany for the first time in World Cup history at Japan's Yokohama International Stadium infront of 69, 029 fans. Having charmed the Japanese, a majority of them donning the green-and-yellow for thematch, Brazil went on to stun Germany through a solid stream of creative offensive tactics. Apart fromgrinding the only game their opponents seemed to know how to set up -- the technically perfect cross kick andheader act they had been using to effect -- every successive wave of whirling forwards ground at the gut ofthe German technical mind.

The belly of the defensive wall was pierced, individual players forced to pivot out of position, andgoalkeeper Oliver Kahn made to bend into positions his body now had trouble predicting. Then a spinning midairtwirl from a superb kick by Kleberson in the closing minutes of the first beat Kahn over his right shoulderonly to batter against the bar for a thirty-yard rebound that landed in empty space. It was then that Kahnseemed to lose his self-assurance. If for no other reason, Brazil won the game out of patience, returning inplay after different play to challenge the over-hyped top keeper of the tournament. As it were, there weremore, many more reasons behind their unequivocal victory.

Pentacampeao! Brasil, Parabens!!

At 67 minutes, Rivaldo wound up for a long shot from center position just outside of the penalty area. Kahndove ahead to trap it, but as he fell onto the ball, its spin bounced it brutally against his upper chest andit fled like a swordfish drawn too quickly to boat. Ronaldo, whose relentless ball chasing had grown freneticas the game drove on, did not lose the opportunity. Swooping in on the rebound, he caught Kahn still sprawledon the field from the save. The goalie had no chance to recover as Ronaldo barreled the ball into the lowerleft hand side of the net. Brazil 1-0. Back home, it seemed like the South American country had vanishedmomentarily in a blur of explosions, fireworks and smoke.

Then at 79 minutes, following a scramble outside of the penalty zone, Ronaldo dug at a turnover controlledby Kleberson and shuttled center toward Rivaldo, who let it roll into the legs of three defensemen. With thedesperate Gerald Asamoah trying to fall over the ball in lost control, Ronaldo stubbed it ahead, pivoted andsnuck the ball past Kahn's left hand side again. In the wake of the second goal, the Germans were scramblinglike a line of ants after seeing their scouts get murdered. Their team had been psychologically wounded. Forthe rest of the game, Brazil's defense merely acted like a mirror to conjure the Germans' panic into a flippedimage.

Heavily marked, both Rivaldo and Ronaldinho were suffocating for most of the game - unfairly stripping theformer of most valuable player status. The claustrophobic treatment only left Kleberson to perfect his art, infull bloom since the brilliant victory against England in the quarterfinal. At the outset of the tournament,Felipao had desperately tried to replace Emerson, the team captain injured on the eve of the opener againstTurkey. But he stumbled upon his discovery of splitting the atom into Kleberson and Gilberto Silva only byaccident. The two midfielders were instrumental in coalescing the tightest team playing Brazil had seen whenRonaldinho was unfairly sent off in the second of the quarterfinal thriller. Ever since then, as captain Cafuand Roberto Carlos shuttled the ball up on the sides, the two midfielders spun concentric circles in thecenter, turning rival strikers into harried defensemen.

On Germany's side, leading scorer Miroslave Klose was held to a fourth straight shutout, after having leadthe tournament with Ronaldo and Rivaldo for most goals scored. Worse, he seemed to shift his attention awayfrom the net and toward players like Cafu, whom he kneed in the back without mention from the otherwise superbreferee, Pierluigi Collina. But when he elbowed Edmilson in the face in a mid-air collision a few minuteslater, Germany's roughneck tactics were swiftly silenced with a yellow card. To which Klose reacted twominutes later in front of a disbelieving Collina by getting into some Rivaldo-inspired theatrics, as he fellto the field on a pseudo-trip from Edmilson.

The opportunity of catching Klose's maneuvering red-handed finally relieved the camera from its relentlesstracking of Rivaldo as if in expectation of more of his alleged cheating. Rivaldo's self-justification of hismisplace reaction after being hit in the thigh by Hakan Unsal's unsportsmanly shot while waiting to kick acorner in the opener against Turkey was met by the anger only addressed to a magician who reveals the secretof his tricks.

In a similar vein, David Beckham acted out two spectacular falls in the penalty zone during thequarterfinal against Brazil, which only the English press seemed to recognize as worthy of the yellow card. Itonly proved that play-acting is not the art in which Rivaldo excels, his antics standing out more for theireccentricity than frequency. His detractors should learn to recognized deception more acutely, especially whenremaining at the mercy of what only the cameras pick up and highlight in replays.

"It is natural in Brazil that to be second is to be last," Scolari lamented passionately in thepost-match press conference. In his brief but thoughtful comments, he may have succeeded better than most indrawing the ties between football, nationhood and international political relations. This manifold isdetermined not by the justice of who deserves to win over who does not. "The image of this Selection isone of players' courage, care, love and friendship. I'm not a politician, I don't like politics, but, byacting this way, we will always make Brazil grow," he emotionally explained. Football is not politicalbecause of the names of participating nations and their victorious triumphs - these are minimal elements ofwhich only war is based. This game of football exceeds the stupidity of human militarism by the group energyand psychological coherence a team manages to create in the hopes that each side gets its proper due withfortune's love and blessings.

Perhaps the most moving sight, perfectly locked into Ronaldo's elated tear shedding after leaving the fieldin the second, was Mario Zagalo's message to him on Brazil's TV Globo post-match show. A futebol institutionon his septuagenarian feet, Zagalo was himself a scorer and key player in Brazil's first World Cup victory in1958, and notably went on to coach the selection in their 1998 French campaign. Caught up in the controversysurrounding Ronaldo's nervous convulsion on the eve of the final, Zagalo spoke with the wisdom of history'scorrective brush.

Ronaldo, the 'fenomeno', spent two-and-a-half years out, recuperating from a damaged knee ligament thatrequired surgery. He had barely recovered his level of fitness by the time of the Selection's last friendlyagainst Malaysia in May. But Ronaldo seemed to react to Felipao's conviction that he would be the key playeronce again, and surged forth to blaze the fifth star on the Selection's tropical jersey. His eight goals werethe most scored by a World Cup tournament player since 1970, and his total number of 12 has tied Pele'srecord. The ex-coach gazing into the survivor's eyes through the television lens assured him that 1998 hadbeen corrected, and a long personal struggle vanquished.

In what was hyped as a goalkeeper's dream encounter, it would be sad to part on the note of Kahn's errorand failings. No sweetheart himself, Kahn does not deserve the blame for his team's loss as much as Brazil'sMarcos does for its victory. For Brazil's outstanding offensive drive, played out with the grace of curvedpatterns, would hardly have obtained its style and distinction without the defense triangle's solid summit.Marcos may have been less active since Lucio, Edmilson and Roque Junior sealed the defensive cracks. Byspectacularly stopping two key German shots from Oliver Neuville and Oliver Bierhoff, the keeper has beendubbed Sao Marcos in acknowledgement that Brazilians especially know how to confer. In the end, the five-timeworld champion team had no need for a savior like Romario, just vastly talented and creative improvisers. In abrilliant victory, the Green-and-Yellow has given the world again some of the tropical flavor of a countrynamed BRAZZZZILLLLLL.

(Norman Madarasz writes from Rio de Janeiro. He welcomescomments.)