Not exactly buried in the contest is the question concerning Ronaldo. He is, at 29, surely not finished, yet there are many out there who seem to believe that they are witnessing his end.
Ronaldo, we should remember, arrived at the 2002 World Cup in a worse state than he appears to be in now. His knees then had been gutted by surgery, his last World Cup memory was the strange visit to hospital in Paris on the day of the 1998 final, then the anonymous performance that followed.
Yet in Japan he was the tournament’s top scorer, and he finished the final with the two goals that destroyed Germany in Yokohama. A magnificent football animal, in some ways a child within a man, Ronaldo possessed a speed of thought and a turn of foot that defied all the attempts, medical and sporting, to prevent his comeback. This time around, he has been brooding for all manner of reasons — in his personal life, seemingly in his ebbing football existence at Real Madrid.
If he has lost the appetite, you would have thought that Carlos Alberto Parreira, the experienced Brazil coach, would have been the first to know. Parreira defies the chorus calling for him to “rest” his favourite centre- forward. Some cynics even say that Nike, the paymaster to the Brazil national federation as well as to Ronaldo, will not hear of him being dropped. That suggestion is unworthy, especially if it should have the consequence of Brazil clinging to an unfit goalscorer while jeopardising their crown. A more generous view is that Parreira sees on the training ground, and has seen over the past decade, that Ronaldo responds to a spark of enthusiasm by exploding into a matchwinner beyond compare.
In the current side he not only has contenders for his place, he not only faces an Australia rearguard that might be intent on kicking him, but he faces his own immediate past. Nobody has explained, probably nobody can, why he experienced dizzy spells last week and why — an eerie echo of 1998 — he was taken to hospital for an overhaul. The doctors found nothing to explain the dizziness, although the Brazil team physician did use the term “stress-related”.
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Ronaldo will get probably one hour this evening, and may need just one chance, one goal to destroy the new myth that is growing around him. He cannot deny that he is carrying weight, and he cannot turn on his iPod on the pitch and turn off all the nagging questions that the so-called experts keep throwing at him.
He has to play. He will, a few of us believe, explode into scoring action at some time. And when he emerges as the record World Cup scorer of all time, the critics will doubtless find other ways to hound him and harass the Brazilian management for trusting him.
But take a look when the game is on at the comparative movement of Ronaldo and Adriano. They are both big; Adriano is supposed to be the replacement in waiting. The manager has opted (unusually for him, for he has a cautious nature) to play both of them as well as the incredible Kaka in attack. It is a gamble that says, “You score, we score more.” It depends on each player firing, and it puts an onus on Ronaldo and Adriano to be energetic, quick and hungry.
Even against Croatia last Tuesday, when clearly Ronaldo was not close to his best, there were times when the speed of his footwork eclipsed the best that Adriano could muster.
The alternative, the youthful Robinho, is so far an apprentice, although those coming from Brazil tend to be men overnight.
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And, of course, the tactical battle will revolve around whether Australia can afford to deploy two or more men to subdue the instincts of Ronaldinho. That seldom happens two games in a row. Possibly just as unlikely is an Australian comeback, like the one led by Tim Cahill against the Japanese last week.
Australia wear the same colours as Brazil, but have little to compare. They must make up for the skill factor in willpower, and that just might kick-start Ronaldo. If it does, pray silence from the cynics.