THIS IS A WORLD CUP season, so when I was updating The Professor for re-publication in August 2005, I decided to include two pages about how Brazil won the World Cup, just in case readers had forgotten what they had seen or not fully understood what had happened.
I pointed out that Ronaldo needed four chances before he scored in the final.
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WENGER had phoned the PSV Eindhoven president Harry van Raaj repeatedly about their captain Mark van Bommel, a tough tackler with a very powerful shot. But PSV would not budge from their price of £15 million, a fee that suggested that the president did not want to sell his best player, so Wenger bought Brazil’s World Cup winner Gilberto Silva from Atletico Mineiro for £4.5 million.
A former centreback, Gilberto was 25 and six foot one. He was a defensive midfielder who could read the game and make solid, accurate passes, which was enough to earn him a place in Big Phil Scolari’s squad for Korea-Japan. Just before the tournament started skipper Emerson dislocated his shoulder in training, while larking around, pretending to be a goalkeeper, and Scolari turned to Gilberto, who proceeded to play every minute of every game as Brazil lifted their fifth World Cup.
A shy, modest character, Gilberto had grown up in the rural south east and kicked his first ball on the streets of Lagoa da Prata. As soon as he could walk he was playing in bare feet, not always with a ball, and before long he was dreaming of becoming a footballer. Then at sixteen he had to give up the game and work in a quarry to support his mother, father and three sisters. He later rejoined his local club, America, earned a transfer to Atletico Mineiro, and made his debut for Brazil in November 2001.
In the World Cup Gilberto had played in front of three centrebacks, Lucio, Edmilson and Roque Junior, intercepting calmly and knocking simple passes to Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo and Rivaldo, the superstars of the team. His job was to win the ball and give it to them. Scolari did not want to see Gilberto making sprints into the opposition’s penalty area. He had players who could score goals, but he needed to stop goals at the other end. The new man was his anchor, his insurance man, the player that fans came to call “The Invisible Wall”.
What Gilberto did was not really noticed because every player in Brazil’s team was more spectacular than he was, but in a side that used attacking fullbacks he had the crucial holding role that had been played by Clodoaldo in Mexico in 1970, Elzo in 1986 and Mauro Silva in USA in 1994. Elzo had also played for Atletico Mineiro. It is worth noting that the lack of a defensive midfielder was the downfall of the artistic Brazilians of 1982, who had Falcao, Socrates, Zico and Junior, but no holding player to prop up the defence.
The most interesting thing about Brazil in 2002 was the way that Big Phil Scolari had gambled in the construction of his team.
His line-up seemed to say, “I’m betting that twenty first century football is not about territory or tactical superiority. It\’s only about chances and goals, about finishing. So I’m picking a team with eight containers and three scorers. “
When they reached the final with Germany and the game kicked off, Big Phil sweated and worried and shouted and paced around for 67 minutes until Ronaldo eventually scored from his fourth chance. Clearly, Oliver Kahn played a part in Ronaldo missing the first three. But the striker buried his second goal because he was relaxed and confident after scoring his first. He had at last exorcised the trauma of Paris fours year before.
Unfortunately, it looked as if the Ronaldo who had thrilled us in 1996-1998 had gone forever. That Ronaldo was a powerhouse who was kicked and kicked and kicked again until he became a cripple. He missed almost three years with knee injuries. And then he came back and re-invented himself as a different type of striker and Scolari helped him through that process of re-invention by believing in his unique talent and creating a highly unusual team around him. It was risky, the team had some very dodgy spells, but they won all seven games.
Of Ronaldo\’s eight goals, six were from crosses. One was from a through ball against Turkey. The most crucial goal, the seventh, came from a rebound off Kahn. Six from crosses and one from a rebound meant that The Phenomenon, the centre forward who had been a one-man army in his prime, was now, at 25, a poacher.
Inter coach Hector Cuper welcomed Ronaldo\’s success and said he hoped he could have a big season with Inter. Was Cuper sincere? Or would Inter try to sell him now? The new Ronaldo would obviously be better off in Spain. He needed a coach who would cherish him and a team that would let him loaf around between goals.
Big Phil Scolari had turned out to be a very good coach who knew exactly what he was doing. His achievement in winning seven games out of seven outright, without extra-time, penalities or golden goals, will stand in sporting history.
But nobody will remember that he created a team and a style of play which owed nothing to any pre-conceived blueprint and everything to the odd assortment talents available to him.
Football is about players, and players makes styles, so Big Phil said to himself, ‘Ronaldo and Rivaldo can\’t run and can\’t dribble, but they can pass and shoot. They can score goals. In any game, they can score two goals or more, so I will use Ronaldinho, Gilberto and Kleberson to get the ball and give it to them.’
That was how Brazil were able to beat Turkey, China, Costa Rica, Belgium, England, Turkey again and Germany.
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