By Myles Palmer
This morning I had a look in the Archive of Fb22 pages to see what I wrote on this day four years ago.
We live in the present, so most people don’t realise the shrinkage of the R-stars.
The reduction in the repertoires of Ronaldo and Rivaldo over the last four years is HUGE.
They now do less, and do it more slowly, because of injuries.
Reading this old World Cup Final preview, I realised I was a different person then. Maybe we all become different people every four years.We just don’t notice it.
This was what I wrote:
STAGE SET FOR RIVALDO-RONALDO SHOW
If Didier Deschamps lifts the World Cup in Paris on Sunday night,football might really take off in France. It could become as big as cycling.
Basically, France can give Brazil a good game, maybe even a close game, but they lack the fire-power to win.
Brazil are very athletic, pragmatic, packed with left-footed players who can release Ronaldo with a killer ball.
France are very athletic, more functional, packed with good tacklers, not sure whether to gamble on the Monaco boys,Trezeguet and Henry.
France have lost a key centreback,Blanc, while Brazil have regained an attacking right back,Cafu.
Dunga and Deschamps are the twin Napoleons of midfield, but Dunga is in better form.
Rivaldo and Zidane are the big, strong playmakers, and Rivaldo is in better form. Rivaldo can dribble like Zidane, but has more passing options.
Why? Because the movement of Ronaldo, Bebeto, Cafu and Roberto Carlos is more adventurous and fluid.
Brazil started nervously against Holland, who outpassed them in the first half.
France started too slowly against Croatia, always playing in front of them, taking too many touches rather than supporting each other at speed, looking for a lay- off.
Maybe Brazil will be less nervous in the final than they were in the semi-final. In the semi, Brazil were worried about not reaching the final. That pressure has now been taken away.
Brazil are now where they want to be,and where we expect world champions to be.
Without Blanc, what will Aime Jacquet do? Leave Leboeuf,who came on when Blanc was sent off against Croatia,
alongside the magnificent Desailly?
Can the Chelsea sweeper handle a World Cup Final against Ronaldo and Rivaldo?
Or should the coach move Thuram into the middle?And bring in Vincent Candela?
Candela is a right-footed full back who played left back against Denmark in the third Group C game, when France Reserves won 2-1 with that goal by Manu Petit.
Thuram, who plays centreback for Parma, has played against Ronaldo in Serie A. Switching Thuram is an option because the only way France can win is to keep a clean sheet. And the only way they can keep a clean sheet is to stop Ronaldo.
And Thuram and Desailly together could stop Ronaldo. But good managers do not make positional switches in defence.
Defending is about angles, good habits, understanding, knowing if the ball is yours or mine.
If you bring in one new player,and move another, you make, in effect, two changes in defence. So you destroy those habits,those understandings.
Aime Jacquet won’t do that. He cannot do anything radical. He has to keep faith with the players who have got France to their first World Cup Final.
So he will push Petit forward to smother Dunga.
He will start with Karembeu,if he is fit,because Karembeu knows Roberto Carlos from playing with him at Real Madrid.
He will leave Thuram on that flank against Carlos,and,
later,Denilson.
If Ronaldo powers through for a one-on-one with the ebullient Barthez, he will hope that the keeper gets there first.
He will pray that Djorkaeff comes up with the goal he promised to score before the Croatia game.
For me, France’s best bet is to turn the clock back to June 14th, and play like they did against Saudi Arabia.
In that game, also at St Denis, they generated a thrilling momentum, comparable to Argentina in 1978, even after Zidane was sent off at 2-0.Thierry Henry made it 3-0 within ten minutes, then Lizarazu made it 4-0.
Thuram hit a Eusebio-style rocket inches past the post, a warning that he would score in a later game. He did, twice, in the semi-final.
Zidane looked as strong as Kempes, Deschamps as busy as Ardiles, Desailly as indestructible as Passarella,
Henry as quick as Bertoni.
It was, of course, only Saudi Arabia. But the point was thatFrance attacked and pressed and raced forward with six and seven men. It was fierce, menacing, phenomenally energetic,almost elemental, a whirlwind of attack, attack, attack!
They played without inhibition, knowing that, against the Saudis,attack is the best means of defence.
Can France make a huge, daring conceptual leap and realise that attack is also the best means of defence against Brazil?
Probably not.
Most teams are intimidated by Brazil’s skill, their power, their reputation, their four World Cup victories, each one legendary, each involving, Mario Zagallo, as player, coach and assistant coach.
Zagallo, the diamond-hard veteran, knows that even a fifth World Cup will not silence his critics. He has not had to qualify for this World Cup, so his team has not faced many hyper-intense pressure games.
They have, perhaps, started to blossom, as a power team. As a power team. That is important. As a power team with a few touches of finesse, not as the flair team that everyone still,misguidedly, expects Brazil to be.
Zagallo is a great man, a great coach, a great survivor, a great winner.
Dunga is in the same mould. If Dunga had played in 1982,Brazil would have beaten Italy and everyone else. In 2006.
Zagallo might still be there, maybe in a wheelchair, telling the team to keep it tight,staycompact, work hard when we don’t have the ball.
Zagallo’s main achievement,in the last three months, has been to integrate the awkward, gangling Rivaldo into his scheme of things. A far from easy task, but a worthwhile one.
Rivaldo the rattlesnake has done more than Zidane in this tournament.
He is a great footballer because he can hurt you in so many different ways.
He can whip crosses from the left between the keeper and the back line. He can pick out runners with 35-yard crossfield balls. He can shake, rattle and roll right through a defence and lift it over the keepers body, as we saw him do against Schmeichel.
Most interestingly, although we have not seen it yet, Rivaldo can come in from the right side and aim screamers and dippers into the top or bottom corner. He annihilated Real Madrid last season by doing that, when Barcelona won 3-0.
Coming in from the right flank with that long loping stride and that velcro left boot, Rivaldo can be unplayable.
Let’s hope some real fans got tickets.
Deschamps has complained about the lack of atmosphere, saying there were too many suits at the semi-final, and we know he is right.
Twenty big companies have paid 20 million each to wine and dine their clients, staff and guests.
But it has also been a hugely enjoyable sports festival for the working classes, the immigrants, especially those lucky few who could afford tickets. Waving Algerian flags, Moroccan flags, they have supported a French side which is a world team in itself, a mixture of north and south, black, white and Arab.
Barthez, born in Lavelanet, a small town near the Pyrenees,Lizararzu, a Basque from St Jean de Luz, a mere free-kick from the Spanish border.
Thuram’s family are from Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Desailly was born in Ghana, Karembeu in the French Pacific islands of New Caledonia, Zidane in La Castellane, the rough Arab quarter of Marseilles, of Algerian parents.
Djorkjaeff has a Russian-Ukrainian father who played for France in the 1966 World Cup Finals.
Guivarc’h is a Breton name, while the rest have typical French names: Petit, Blanc,Deschamps. And Deschamps has Spanish ancestry.
The World Cup should be the most exciting television show on earth. At times, not often enough, it has been.
If Brazil win 3-1 or 4-1,it will be memorable spectacle.
If France win by any score, it will be a sensation.
Whatever happens in the 1998 World Cup Final it will not be as tight as Brazil-Italy in Pasadena, which was tactically fascinating, rather than sterile, as many said.
And St. Denis will not see as much aggro and acrimony Rome saw during that Germany-Argentina debacle in 1990.
The 1990 Final had one goal, a penalty by Brehme after a Voller dive, and red cards for Monzon and Dezotti. The 1994 Final had no goals in 90 minutes.
So far, France 98 has been the facepaint World Cup, the shirt-pulling and diving World Cup, the rubbishy referee World Cup, the corporate hospitality World Cup, and the ticket tout World Cup.
But it could still finish on a high note if Ronaldo, the Nike Express, the finest footballer since Maradona, takes off on one of those world-beating, defence-wrecking, mind-boggling, fan-screaming, turbo-charged solo runs, and scores a stunning goal.
If anybody can do it, just do it, Ronaldo can.
Medics say the weary Ronaldo needs 30 days complete rest.
And the billionaire boy wonder knows damned well he will never be given 30 days to rest those battered ankles – that really would be fantasy football !
Meanwhile,the whole world is waiting,in Rio and Rome,in Lavelanet,Lyons and Liverpool, in Milan,Monaco and
Marseilles,in Santiago and St Jean de Luz,in Guadeloupe and Ghana,in Tokyo and Tenerife,waiting,waiting to see what happens.
Anticipation. Anticipation is half the fun.
And that’s one of the nice things about the final.You can enjoy the anticipation more than the previous rounds.
Everything is simpler because 30 of the 32 teams have been eliminated.
The World Cup Final is a duel, a series of duels, easy to imagine, easy to anticipate.
Both teams have great players.
One team has a great coach, and one has a bloke with a leather notebook who has done OK to guide his men this far.
Not long till kick-off. Have fun!