|
June 21, 2002
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations:
Kosovo 2002
June 20, 2002
Chris Kromm
The South
at War: a Tour of the US Military/Industrial Complex
Jacob Levich
The War
on Terror is
Not a Suicide Pact
Mark Weisbrot
What
are They Doing to Argentina?
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
June 19, 2002
Gary Leupp
Red Targets in Terror War
Lenni Brenner
The Road
Forward for the
Palestinian Movement
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Cheney's Diary:
Cakewalking Through Minefields
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
June 18, 2002
David Vest
Raise the
White Flag in Terror War?
Ben White
Is It Possible
to "Understand" the Rise in "Anti-Semitism"?
Edward Said
Palestinian
Elections Now
June 17, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Watergate
and All That
Philip Farruggio
A Maximum
Wage Law
Ron Sullivan
Law
and Orders:
The Assault on Trial by Jury
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Taking
on the School
of the Americas
Joan Smith
G.W. Bush:
The Man is Stupid
Dave Marsh
Corporate
Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive
Robert Jensen
Rhetoric
Distorts Realities
June 15 / 16, 2002
Tanweer Akram
A Review
of Noam Chomsky's 9-11
Daniel Wolff
The Day
They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant
Ralph Nader
A Corporate
Crime State
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
June 21,
2002
Brazil 2 England
1
The Gaucho's Wild Ride
by Norman Madarasz
Rio de Janeiro--- Brazil's youngest football superstar had been
playing a background role to the national team's uneven performance
in FIFA's 2002 World Cup. Although providing Rivaldo with a
textbook perfect pass that led to the first of the Selection's
two goals, and eliminating Belgium in the process, Ronaldinho
Gaucho still lay in the shadows. He had yet to demonstrate the
dashing dribbles with which he has been thrilling the fans of
the Paris Saint-Germain this year. Only true football diehards
would have seen these highlights re-transmitted on Brazilian
T.V. For the rest of the country, the promising Ronaldinho had
vanished.
Back in 1999, Ronaldo De Assis Moreira
was part of the champion Gremio team from the southern Gaucho
state of Rio Grande do Sul before being transferred to Manchester
United. After suffering knee problems, his ties to the dream
of European club success started to flounder. Parting paths
with Manchester, he ended being barred from playing as his
future wove its way from negotiation to rejection with a handful
of interested teams. When at last rid of the red tape, the 22-year-old
striker who first came to prominence during the Brazil's 1999
Copa America victory, and leading striker in the Confederations
Cup of the same year, Ronaldinho reappeared and reemerged in
Paris, France. In the meantime, his muscle density had been
pumped prominently to provide flying buttresses to his spiraling
attacks.
Brazil entered its semi-final confrontation
with England almost with its collective head bowed. Following
a truly pitiful performance against Belgium but for the last
ten minutes when victory was sealed, the world's sports press
went on to declare Brazil to be unworthy of beating Beckham's
boys. In the vindictive verses of France's L'Equipe, and Italy,
Spain and Argentina's press, Brazil won their match in the Round
of 16 along with the referee's help. When Belgian captain Wilmots
went up for a header at late in dying minutes of the first half
and sunk the ball past Marcos, the referee ruled out the goal
due to a discreet hold committed against defenseman Roque Junior,
only to later admit that the call was wrong.
As much as the Brazilian "Selection"
have recognized the many problems afflicting the team, it has
only transformed them psychologically into underdogs. Uncharacteristically
lined with the finest set of strikers in the world--- the "Three
R's" of Rivaldo, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho---, with midfield
charged up by the dervish Roberto Carlos, the team is capped
by a keeper as famous for the kiss that converts his cross-signing
as for the spider-like grip he uses to immobilize the ball.
All Brazil lacked was to play like a team.
Some would add that what they needed
was to confront a team that mattered. England, flying high from
the massacre of the Danish court, had everything it took to
frame Brazil in a mock comedy. Indeed, at times they appeared
to be stricken by Hamlet's doubt. Judging by the look on keeper
Seaman's face, the King's ghost itself was guiding Ronaldinho's
39-yard free-kick as it stretched into a gravity defying curve
to seek out the upper heights of the net. Not that the kick
left team England asking the perennial Shakespearean question.
It was Hamlet beckoning instead to Horatio, as if bowing to
their masters: "Speak to us, Ronaldinho, for thou art a
scholar!"
As if to correct the well-publicized
issue of overly sympathetic referees to Brazil's team, Felipe
Ramos Rizo sought neutrality, which actually provided Beckham
with some touch proof whistle blowing. After having dashed France's
hopes in the qualifying round by dismissing Thierry Henry 15
minutes into their second match, Mexican referee Rizo now decided
to send the Gaucho star off for a walk. The fancy footer from
the PSG had just confused Danny Mill's foot with the ball in
what was clearly an unintentional foul.
A yellow card would have slapped the
appropriate hand. But in dismissing Ronaldinho to the amazement
and panic of his teammates the referee converted the red into
a green card for Brazil to tighten up their failing group dynamic
into claustrophobic cohesion against which England's clamoring
charge came to nil.
Midfielder Kleberson, replacing Juninho
following the latter's confused performance against Belgium,
not only aligned Brazil's defense in a block formation the team
has hallucinated about achieving. He also pushed the reduced
10-man squad up into the opponent's end for at least half of
the 30 minutes of grace England was bestowed.
Brazil's coach "Big Phil" then
made the key change to performance in this Cup. In a move to
relieve Ronaldo from the suffocating 3-man mark that paralyzed
him for most of the game, he sent in Edilson. Drawing arabesques
around the stumbling English defense and midfielders, the former
Flamengo striker had them wondering whether he would be sprinting
forward or back, and kept the ball at safety's distance from
the penalty area.
Much earlier in a seemingly different
game, Michael Owen managed England's only goal on what was a
backfield error committed by the otherwise impeccable Lucio.
As the ball was shot forward from midfield, the Bayer Leverkusen
defenseman lost control of it as it bounced from his chest---
with Owen crawling up his back. As Marcos sprinted out of the
zone to slam Owen's range, the Liverpool striker clipped one
just over the tips of his miscalculating fingers.
As for the living link between England's
football culture and pop trends, Beckham's passing was measured
astutely with balls cutting through the air in beautiful geometric
patterns. Still, the perfection of the Imperial system wilted
with the fuzzy logic of the samba strikers as Ronaldinho burst
through England's defense at 39 minutes, passing to Rivaldo
only after having completely drawn four defensemen off balance.
Rivaldo's left foot tore Seamen's arms beyond extension, hopping
underneath and filling in the lower left corner of the net.
Ronaldinho's free kick 5 minutes into
the second half trumped the defending Englishmen, who were expecting
a cross. As the ball tied Seaman's limbs into a mariner's knot,
Brazil's "beautiful game" turned into the world's most
exciting show.
Shades of the 1970 final, indeed. Captain
Cafu, who had warned the weak-hearted to sleep through the game,
could not temper the smile pasted on his face. "We won
it for Ronaldinho," he said. The Gaucho's wild ride brought
the Selection the key rush and pass for the tying goal, and
the free-kick winner. Yet for the fans back home, perhaps most
important was the redemption he brought to the team in this
victory. With punishing refereeing against the Selection, grounds
for claiming favoritism were wiped clean.
Nor was there the shame of hyper-individualist
brilliance at the expense of team cohesion. Big Phil's greatest
victory finally happened with the perfect oscillation of a team
whose looseness he profoundly believes is the source of its
creative explosions, but whose fabric had thus far fallen short
of ideal tautness.
Still an underdog whose every step is
chained to Promethean tasks? Big Phil would not have it any
other way. History may have dribbled strange psychological reversals
in this Cup. After all France had fanned in an inverse repetition
to what Brazil had suffered in the 1998 final when their star
player was reduced by injury. And now impermeable defense squads
shifted sides under the dramatic strain of a 30-minute 11-to-10-man
game.
By contrast, the results of 1970 when
Brazil put England away at 1-0, and with 8lbs each dedicated
to the Mexican afternoon sun, is a constant the whole country
has joyously relived.
Norman Madarasz
writes from Rio de Janeiro. He welcomes comments at normanmadarasz@hotmail.com
Today's
Features
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations: Kosovo 2002
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|