The World Cup is not just a celebration of football, but a veritable education.
It exposes even the most insular, Yorkshire bitter-drinking old man to the beautiful game outside of England and causes a whole new generation, watching the games crammed around a TV in their classroom, to realise what football can and should be.
In 2002, the World Cup’s latest textbook came out; Korea and Japan. Upon its blank pages, Nike’s ‘Total 90’ boots, Papa Bouba Diop dancing around his top and whatever the hell Ronaldo did with his hair wrote new stories in footballing folklore.
With every unnecessary step-over, dinked pass and thunderous shot, the minds of young and old alike were smashed to pieces. Football, it turned out, was so much more than wet Saturday afternoons.
But one moment, in particular, broke England. It destroyed the country’s hearts, and in the process blew the minds of every single person who watched it as well.
The moment, of course, was that Ronaldinho free-kick.
“Who the hell is this guy!?” some old man in a pub probably yelled out when one of the blue-shirt Brazilians stepped up to take an indirect free-kick in the 50th minute of England and Brazil’s World Cup quarter-final.
The answer was Ronaldo de Assis Moreira, Ronaldinho for short, who was about to announce himself to the world as one of the game’s biggest names.
He had already impressed in the tournament, forming a terrifying Brazilian attack along with Ronaldo and Rivaldo. Known as the three Rs, they became the central attraction of the 2002 tournament and, as we now know, would fire Brazil all the way to their fifth and most recent World Cup title.
Ronaldinho had only been playing European football for a year when he was picked by Luiz Felipe Scolari, another unknown quantity who was about to make a name for himself on the world stage. Plying his trade for a much less glamourous PSG, he was a total unknown quantity to English audiences.
That all changed the moment the ball left his foot.
20 years ago today: the goal that turned Ronaldinho into an icon.
You’re not 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 doubting he meant it, are you?pic.twitter.com/e6Gf98GK11
— Planet Football (@planetfutebol) June 21, 2022
Curling, floating and dipping, the Brazilian’s strike made the ball look more like a floater rather than an actual, proper Adidas Fevernova.
It looked like his deep free-kick had gone wrong, but then eyes would have noticed the flailing David Seaman who had stepped up from the…
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