By Myles Palmer
BRAZIL should aim to do to Germany what Arsenal did to Bayer Leverkusen at Highbury.
Start in top gear, attack with thrilling speed, and bury their early chances.
If it goes to 70 minutes without a goal the Germans will fancy themselves.
But with an early goal it might develop into a spectacle. Although I’m still not optimistic.
It could easily be one of those games where one side attacks, has a lot of shots and gets the keeper warmed up, and he goes son to have a blinder.
OLIVER KAHN can do that. He can’t win the World Cup Final on his own, but his saves might show the Germans that they can beat a technically superior side
So Brazil must score first to prevent a grinding, boring war of attrition.
RONALDINO is young, sharp and fresh,so he could be the crucial creative influence on this game.
The longer the game goes, the more kicks Ronaldo and Rivaldo will take.
THAT’S WHERE COLLINA COMES IN.
If Collina gives each German two fouls before getting out his yellow card, as he did in the England -Argentina game, the Germans will clatter Ronaldo in rotation and the lad will be black and blue inside 20 minutes.
Ronaldo took a shocking knock early on in the 1998 final, colliding with Barthez. And he should not have even been on the pitch then
But even if Brazil go 2-0 up, it’s not over.
Rudi Voller was a vampire as a player. You could knock him down and kick him up in the air and drive a stake through his heart-but he would still get up and grab a goal.
The Germans are built to scrap and defend with eight or nine men and pass the ball sideways to their two crossers, Schneider and Frings on the right side.
Their goal, if they score, will come from a cross.
Against that-and this is where it gets interesting-you need a team who are not scared to push defenders forward to join in attacks.
LUCIO does that and so does Edmilson, who says ,”I can’t help it, I used to be a midfielder.”
EDMILSON is a centreback I always hoped Arsenal would sign, after he played for Lyon at Highbury.
Bergkamp nudged him off the ball in the box and scored. Nine times out of ten the ref would have given a foul, but that time he gave a goal.
Then Edmilson came back with a header in the last minute to equalise. It was a thunderous header from a corner – fantastic timing and power.
I’ve been waiting for Edmilson to do that again in this tournament.
THIS MORNING on TV I saw a clip of Brazil training.
Big Phil was marking Rivaldo, the man he rushed to embrace at the end of the semi against Turkey.
The media go on about Sunday being RONALDO’s destiny, but it’s also RIVALDO’s destiny. He is 30 now and this is his last hurrah.
RIVALDO was a different player in the spring of 1998.He was brilliant but very individualistic, almost a team in himself.
Could he be successfully integrated into the Brazilian side before the World Cup.
He was obviously too good to leave out of the squad, and you couldn’t put him in the squad but leave him out of the team.
At that time I saw it as a problem that was unique to Rivaldo, since every other player in the world has a best position and could be fitted simply into a team unit.
Rivaldo was too creative to play as a striker, and he roamed too much to be an international midfielder, so it was a conundrum.
I was fascinated by how the late developer, who was 26 but had only ten caps, would fit in with the boy wonder.
A fascinating moment in Stuttgart in March 98 when Rivaldo played in a friendly against Germany.
He played well and Brazil won 2-1.
We’d settle for the same score again, wouldn’t we?
Brazil are the better side.
They have more gears, more variation, more goalscorers. Roberto Carlos might even produce a decent final ball!
29th June 2002.