Richard Williams A one-two with his fellow striker, a burst through the defensive cover and a shot bent with the outside of his right foot into the bottom left-hand corner of the net. One-nil after 19 minutes. Still a long way to go, at least in any normal match. But on this occasion even the opposing fans cheered.
This was Ronaldo luis Nazarino de limas first league goal since November 21 1999, when he scored for Internazionale against lecce and then disappeared once more into the netherworld of surgeons and physiotherapists, an all-too familiar environment from which many feared he would never re-emerge. Yet on Sunday the former prodigy, now 25, returned to Inters starting line-up at Brescia and scored the first goal in a 3-1 away win. For once the talk was about Ronaldos right foot rather than his right knee, the object of extensive rebuilding work in recent years. To make the clubs joy complete, the second and third goals were scored by Christian Vieri, the other half of the “dream double” so expensively assembled by the clubs president Massimo Moratti, who could have been forgiven for long ago relinquishing all hope that two of the worlds strongest strikers would ever be seen in tandem in the black and blue stripes.
Nor was the joy confined to Inters staff and supporters. Brescias fans rose to applaud the evidence of Ronaldos renaissance. Amazingly the same thing happened in Turins Stadio delle Alpi and Romes Stadio Olimpico, when spectators at the Torino vs Atalanta and lazio vs Fiorentina saw the news of his goal flashed up on their electronic scoreboards. The great Gabriel Batistuta, with whom Ronaldo ought by rights to have been contesting the leading goalscorers award in Italy for the past few seasons, led the chorus of praise. “I was happy when I heard about his goal,” Romas Argentine striker said, “because Ronaldo is football”. That was certainly how it looked in the summer of 1998, during the build-up to the World Cup in France. A year earlier the big-thighed, buck-toothed young man had won Fifas player of the year award and France Footballs ballon dor, and the marketing men were promoting him as the focal point of the tournament. Ronaldo, the football world was assured, would assume the role of Pele and Maradona. He was the symbolic figure who would remind us of the games essential beauty. Or so the executives at Nike, Brazils paymasters, were hoping. Mario Zagallo, Brazils manager that year, retired from the game last month, the only man to win four World Cups two as a player and two as a coach. One day perhaps he will share with us the details of what really happened that day in Paris when Ronaldo suffered convulsions hours before the World Cup final and was rushed to hospital for tests. Zagallo took him out of the first published line-up, replacing him with Edmundo, only to reinsert him an hour or so later after heated negotiations behind locked doors. The game that should have crowned Ronaldos career instead drew attention to the physical and psychological damage caused by all the predatory attention from opposing defenders and the insatiable media that he had experienced since leaving Brazil in 1995, aged 19, to join first PSV Eindhoven and then Barcelona. And it was when he returned to Italy, for his second season with Inter, that the knee, weakened by the force of all those muscular twists and turns as well as by the callous attention of beaten opponents, started to send out urgent messages of distress. All the more reason, then, for the world to cheer last Sundays goal and the rebirth it seemed to proclaim. As yet no one really knows whether Ronaldos knee is as good as new, good enough to carry him through a full 90 minutes. And even a Ronaldo at the height of his powers might not be enough to salvage Brazils World Cup hopes this time round.