By Myles Palmer
I hope Arsenal get this Brazilian because he’s a power player.
Since Gilberto Silva has been in Big Phil’s team Brazil have stopped losing games.
He is a tackler, a ball-winner who protects your centrebacks.
He’s fast, so he can intercept.
He is a powerful, well-balanced athlete who can do a bit of everything: press, tackle, win it, give it, run box to box if necessary.
But in the World Cup he was a junior member, a new boy who won his first cap only last November against Bolivia.
So his job was to get the ball and give it to Rivaldo, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Roberto Carlos.
REMEMBER, BIG PHIL SCOLARI’s BRAZIL was nothing like Carlos Alberto Pareira’s winning team in USA 94.
That was a team of small, busy players who played tightly, neatly, compactly.
Big Phil’s side was a team of tall athletes. OK, some were well over the hill, like Ronaldo and Rivaldo, but those two could still score goals.
So Big Phil, like Arsene, is a big believer in athletic power.
Like Arsene, he wasn’t too worried about what happened when his team had the ball. He knew they were creative.
He was worried about what might happen when Brazil DIDN’T have the ball.
He did not want to have a team that might be outrun or outpowered, so he needed strong, disciplined players who could do a job efficiently against the best in the world.
GILBERTO SILVA played a big part in that, as did ELZO and CEREZO, two previous anchormen who were produced by his club, Atletico Mineiro, for the national team.
He is 25 and will be 26 on October 7th.
Gilberto is not a goalscorer but he scored three in his first six games for Brazil.
It’s hardly typical of Arsene to sign somebody who has won the World Cup.
He generally signs up-and-coming players who WANT to play for their country.Sure, he signed Henry, but he was a squad player and a sub in France 98.
As I understand it, club president Alexandre Kalil and the player’s agent Angelo Pimintel are in Europe talking to clubs and Atletico want $10 million for him.
That’s £6.3 million.
I’m told Arsenal have offered $8 million and that Kalil and Pimintel were in London today(Wednesday).
The fact that they are here suggest that Arsenal may go to $10 million or that the Brazilians are willing to split the difference.
Since there are three Brazilians already at the club, Gilberto might settle in more quickly than Edu did.
Arsenal already have playmakers in Pires, Bergkamp and Vieira, so they don’t need another playmaker.
They need somebody who can win the ball – and Gilberto is good at that.
He could partner Vieira, or, if Vieira needed a rest before a big game, he could anchor the midfield himself.
Naturally, Vieira does not ask for a rest. He wants to play, not watch. He is not a good watcher of football.
But there could be times, after Gilberto has settled in, when the manager figures he can win without Vieira – and keep him fresh for the following game.
That would be a luxury. That would be a luxury he has never had in six years.It would be, as I sometimes say, a conceptual leap.
But that’s all hypothetical, of course, until he signs. It’s speculation, a fairy story,the kind of thing I usually avoid here.
I regard football as a topical pleasure to be enjoyed from day to day and week to week, taking each match as it comes, not thinking ahead. I prefer reality to fantasy.
But since I think GILBERTO SILVA, a world champion, would be a tremendous acquisition,I have rambled off into fantasy for a few paragraphs tonight. Oh well…
It’s a measure of how far Arsene has brought the club that nobody these days is too surprised that he’s going for a Brazilian World Cup winner-and nobody would be surprised if he signs him.
24th July 2002.