Brazil. After all the uncertainties of this World Cup, Brazil. France is out. England is out. Italy is out. Spain is out. Argentina is out. But Brazil is here. Brazil is the emotional heart of soccer. Listen to your heart pounding when they show traces of the old jogo bonito, the beautiful game, and you can hear the samba beat.
The four-time champions play Turkey in tomorrow’s semifinal here. It was worth a pilgrimage far beyond the suburbs simply to see Brazil practice. The people of Saitama have built a gorgeous stadium and also a subway line running to within a mile of it.
The players came out on the field wearing their blue shirts. In the empty stadium you could hear the shouts and the hand clapping as the ball danced within the circle. All is not well with Brazilian soccer these days. There are scandals and financial shortages and a drain of the best players to Europe. The people are said to be disenchanted. The news media, of course, always are. But the players seemed to enjoy their game in the middle of the field.
After half an hour, 10 players pulled on yellow jerseys, with Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Roberto Carlos on the first team. Ronaldinho, the buoyant midfielder with the thick ringlets of hair, who is banned from the semifinal because of the red card he picked up against England, bounced around in the second team. Ronaldo ran his routes at perhaps 75 percent speed.
From time to time, Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, known as Big Phil, would tweet his whistle and yell instructions.
June 25, 2002. By George Vecsey(Saitama)
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