History to be repeated?: Twenty years ago, Brazil won the World Cup, and fans are expecting a repeat performance. Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images
SPORT BLOG
Brazilian royalty presided over the defeat of Switzerland on Monday evening. Cafu, Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo and Kaka sat debonair in the dignitaries’ box – their symbolic shadows looming over their successors below.
The quartet represent the last time the legendary Seleção lifted the World Cup. Twenty years later it is expected to do so again; tipped by the bookmakers and demanded by millions at home. At stake is not just a trophy but a place in history. An invitation to sit in the pantheon with those gods.
With the exception of Kaka – who was yet to craft his legend in 2002 – the group formed the core of one the greatest teams the World Cup has ever hosted.
Robert Carlos pioneered the marauding full-back mould that we take as ubiquitous today. His strength was a self-confidence bordering on arrogance – liable to launch a missile at goal in earnest from almost anywhere on the field. Cafu was a foil for his bombast on the other side of the pitch. A giant of a leader and a heck of a right-back. Ronaldo was their spear: the golden boot winner who forever earned his Twitter-blessed moniker of “The Original”. (This reminiscence says nothing of the insouciance of Ronaldinho or decisiveness of Rivaldo, the other two stars that year).
[related_posts_sc article_id=”534159″]
In the crowd on Monday there was a fan adorning a triangle wedge of hair. In another reality his barber would have been shot … but we live in one where Ronaldo immortalised it into football’s most recognisable haircut.
Will the blonde-tipped fades of Neymar and Raphinha be repeated in stadiums two decades from now? That is the challenge of a football team that knows its assignment is a little bit different from everyone else.
Brazil, incidentally, joined France as the only sides to qualify for the knockouts heading into the last round of the group stage. At the other end only Qatar and Canada have been eliminated with mathematical certainty.
The jeopardy of this week’s games is testament to the competitiveness high level world football has reached. Almost no matches have felt routine or inconsequential. The hosts aside, no one has looked out of place. Even Canada, who scored their first ever World Cup goal at the weekend, gave their opponents some heavy licks in their two defeats.
And yet, just as we reach Elysium, Fifa could yank us back.
Next time, 48 teams will contest instead of 32. They will be split into 16 groups of three — unless Fifa decides to fold to the outcry that has greeted that idea. But either way, the game’s most prestigious tournament will be diluted.
Football has always thrived when it has adhered to the Shakespearean truism that brevity is the soul of wit. Bloating the participant list threatens the combative play we have seen in Qatar.
But as cautious as we all are over anything the governing body dreams up, we will arrive back here four years later carrying misplaced optimism hoping to be proved wrong. And if we were to play devil’s advocate, not that Fifa needs any more of those, new ideas can grow into their own over time.
No one was enamoured with the introduction of VAR in Russia 2018. A few tweaks and hundreds of angry headlines later, the system largely does what it is supposed to do: make the sport fairer without jeopardising its essence.
It also gifted us that remarkable Vincent Aboubakar moment on Monday. In what will be filed under the World Cup’s most bizarre goals, the Cameroonian striker scooped his chip with the nonchalance of a man who was certain he was offside. As was everyone else in the stadium. Only technology could not be fooled.
Fifa will always act in its self interest – that’s simply the nature of business. But the beautiful game will always find a way to be beautiful.