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Ronaldo fires Brazil's engine
We spoke of Romario, who clawed his way off the streets of Rio de Janeiro with a bucket and squeegee, slopping water on windshields at red lights and offering to clean them for a few pesos.
Yes, they said gravely, Romario was, indeed a fine player and the offensive heart of this team that would surely win another World Cup. But...
Bebeto, then, his rabbit quickness the perfect complement to the silken smoothness of Romario in flight. Legend said they couldn't stand one another, but where in the draw would you find a pair to match them?
Heads nodded in agreement. Romario and Bebeto: truly a formidable attacking front. But...
But what?
"But," they said, "Wait 'til you see Ronaldo..."
His name was Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima, but even then no one in Brazil called him that. He was Ronaldo, as Edson Arantes do Nascimento was Pele. "Why?" a Brazilian teenager shrugged. "Why not? There is only one."
He was 17 then, and never touched a ball in combat as Brazil danced through the field of national champions to beat Italy on penalty kicks and take the most famous trophy in sports.
He could have played. No one doubted that, least of all coach Carlos Parreira. But he sat on the bench. "He is not here to play, he is here to watch and to learn," Parreira said. "His day will come."
It came three years later. The benchwarmer, now a millionaire after his record transfer from Holland's PSV Eindhoven to FC Barcelona, was voted world player of the year for 1997.
It came again 12 months later when he became the first player ever to win the award back-to-back.
And it will come again in Paris next month -- Romario and Bebeto on the pitch but playing in the shadow of the 21-year-old man-child with the hulking build and sprinter's speed -- when he leads Brazil into its title defence.
Ronaldo is never called the next Pele. In Brazil, that would be sacrilege. Instead, they compare the styles of the legend and legend-in-waiting:
Pele, the magician, the tactician, blessed with magical ability to be ever in the place where the ball was going to be. Ronaldo, the classic centre-forward, pounding around, over or through any obstacle with power and raw, blazing, turn-on-a-cruzeiro speed, and finishing with a shot of laser precision.
"A strapping young lad with the constitution of a champion boxer," gushes Spanish author Manuel Vasquez Montalban, "and the feet of Fred Astaire."
Even with Ronaldo, it will not be an easy defence for Brazil, a team that has lost but four times since taking the Cup in '94, but is now under fire for not playing the dancing, flowing style Brazilians love.
In Brazil a loss is unthinkable, a draw a disaster, and a victory never as decisive as it should have been. "Being coach of Brazil is risking the death penalty," Carlos Parreira said in '94. "That is why I want to win the final. I like living."
He's alive for Paris '98, but he's no longer the coach.
The man now leading Brazil is Mario Zagallo, a Brazilian hero when he won it as a player in 1958, a hero again 12 years later when he won it as a coach -- and now under fire for assembling a side that wins, but not with the traditional Brazilian flair.
Come June in Paris, the kid up front could make him a hero again. Brazil, being Brazil, will settle for nothing less.
NEXT ROUNDS: Round of 16 || Quarter-finals || Semi-finals
GROUP A: Brazil, Morocco, Norway, Scotland
GROUP B: Austria, Cameroon, Chile, Italy
GROUP C: Denmark, France, Saudi Arabia, South Africa
GROUP D: Bulgaria, Nigeria, Paraguay, Spain
GROUP E: Belgium, Holland, Mexico, South Korea
GROUP F: Germany, Iran, United States, Yugoslavia
GROUP G: Colombia, England, Romania, Tunisia
GROUP H: Argentina, Croatia, Jamaica, Japan