“Group stage round-up, 17 June.
Japan went down 1-2 to Mexico.
Brazil put five past Greece.”
“The Son of God lands in Leipzig!!!”
“The surprise Kaká just handed the world!”
“Kaká hit a hat-trick.
Adriano and Robinho piled in the rest.
Brazil tore Greece apart 5-0.”
“Ronaldo’s absence has liberated Brazil National Football Team’s frontcourt, and their attacking prowess astonishes the world….”
…
One Confederations Cup group game set the whole football world on fire.
Fans got a goal feast.
The press got a carnival.
Brazil had been the easiest sell in world football for years.
Part of it was the names: Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Roberto Carlos.
The rest was the South American gift for turning every week into a headline.
Somebody always did something outrageous, and the cameras never looked away.
Even before this tournament started, Ronaldo Nazario, still the absolute centre of the side, publicly turned down Parreira’s call-up.
He wanted a quiet holiday.
Parreira, whether out of spite or sudden generosity, waved him through.
He did not even pick him for the two World Cup qualifiers Ronaldo Nazario had actually wanted to play.
(I hope no one got confused btw Cristiano Ronaldo and Ronaldo Nazario in the previous chapter..)
That sat badly next to Parreira’s earlier line that fatigue was not an excuse.
Add the row over Rivaldo being left out of the squad and Brazil had been living on the back pages for weeks.
The coverage dwarfed every other team.
So even though the gap in quality was obvious, when Kaká ripped through Greece with a hat-trick the world still sat up.
Pundits and the older heads went back through the tape and came out grinning.
Kaká had levelled up.
Since he arrived in Europe in 2002 his game had been all burst and freedom, using pace to create.
Against Greece the close control was sharper, the touches in tight spaces cleaner, the way he used his body to shake markers different.
It felt new.
For a second it looked like two Ronaldinhos in yellow shirts.
One short with the buck teeth.
The other unfairly handsome.
Greece were dealt with cleanly.
Brazil celebrated in Leipzig, then flew that same night to Hanover for Mexico two days later.
They checked into the hotel, ate, and drifted off to their rooms.
Kaká took a long bath, dropped onto the bed, and opened the system.
[ Host scored three goals this match, points +3!
]
[ Host provided one assist this match, points +1 ]
[ Host completed a hat-trick, points +1!
]
[ Current point balance: 7 ]
“Not bad, not bad.”
He ran the numbers.
In the Champions League a goal was worth two points.
He had only transmigrated for the final and lucked one in during extra time, so two points there.
Tonight against Greece: three goals plus the hat-trick bonus.
Four points.
Ordinary cup games paid one point a goal.
Worse than the Champions League.
So the ranking looked something like: ordinary cups and league below Champions League, Champions League below the World Cup.
Winning the Champions League was thirty points.
A league title would be less, but if he stayed fit a season of league plus cups should still land at least fifty.
That meant a full-body treatment or a specialised boost every year.
Push harder, win the league, a cup and the Champions League in the same season, and he could fire both at once.
The future looked good.
He fell asleep smiling.
On 19 June Group A rolled on.
Germany beat African champions Tunisia 3-0.
Argentina put four past Australia, 4-2.
Nobody needed a lecture on Germany.
This generation of tanks: Deisler, Podolski, Ballack, Frings, Klose, had never been soft.
Argentina was not yet the later sides people joked about as the Pampas volleyball team.
They still had the old scandals, the Hand of God and the rest of the dirty laundry, but they mostly let the football do the talking.
Group B felt quieter.
Brazil sat above the rest.
Mexico could at least make a game of it.
Japan and Greece could not.
On 20 June, Group B kicked off again.
Greece went first against Japan.
Masashi Oguro’s goal was enough.
Japan won 1-0, Greece had two losses in a row, and Japan had their first win of the tournament.
This was not yet the Japan that would later knock over heavyweights in World Cup knockouts.
Still, with the golden generation of Europe-based players: Nakata, Nakamura, Inamoto, they were already comfortable bosses of Asia.
Then came Brazil against Mexico at the AWD-Arena in Hanover, and Kaká, hungry for points, used the night to give El Tri a hiding.
In the original history, Brazil had fallen over here.
Mexico sat deep, waited for Brazil to switch off, and stole it 1-0 on the counter.
This time they ran into a Kaká who had taken over the body and treated every goal like a points card.
The Mexicans paid for it.
Ninth minute.
Ronaldinho slipped it into the middle.
Kaká shrugged a defender off, drove into the box and swept it in along the grass before the cover arrived.
The keeper was late to the ground.
Brazil 1-0.
Mexico had barely drawn breath when it happened again in the seventeenth.
This time the attack started on the left with the step-over kid.
Robinho took Roberto Carlos’s long ball and tore down the flank, beat two men, cut inside and smashed it at the near post from twelve yards.
The ball cannoned off the left upright and bounced back into the six-yard box.
Kaká had followed in.
A soft tap with the inside of the right foot lifted it over the keeper’s fingertips and into the net.
Brazil 2-0.
A brace.
That was not the end of it.
Two goals in a row finally woke Mexico up.
They stopped sitting in and tried to play.
Near the end of the first half the middle opened and Kaká and Ronaldinho walked through it.
Kaká chipped it in from the penalty spot.
Brazil 3-0.
Hat-trick.
By half-time Kaká had almost beaten Mexico on his own.
Walking back to the dressing room the Mexican players looked glazed.
“Huff..
We knew there was a gap.
We were ready to lose…
but..
Nobody said the gap was this big!”
Fifteen minutes later the second half started with Kaká and Ronaldinho already in jackets on the bench.
Parreira kept twisting in his seat to look at his new favourite, grinning so wide he was almost matching Ronaldinho tooth for tooth.
The more he looked at Kaká, the better the kid seemed.
Heaven knew the pressure he was under.
He had won the World Cup in 1994 and broken Brazil’s twenty-four-year drought, but Brazilian fans never stayed grateful for long.
Resting on old medals was a good way to get eaten alive.
Taking the job again and clashing with Ronaldo Nazario, even if Parreira refused to call it a clash, had brought a storm of abuse at home.
Refusing to pick Ronaldo Nazario for the last qualifiers and then getting smashed 1-3 by Argentina made it worse.
The papers and the stands had already hung the nickname on him: Stupid Parreira.
In this Confederations Cup his counter-attacking plan had people saying he was wasting a good hand.
Kaká’s two games of fireworks had papered over it a little.
The rule was simple now.
Win, and it was expected.
Lose, and they would send his family tree to meet Jesus.
So two hat-tricks in a row made Kaká look like Parreira’s own son.
Late to the last training camp?
“Late?
That was storing energy.
Big buildup, bigger explosion.”
The second half was flat.
Without Kaká and Ronaldinho the attack dropped a level.
Robinho and Adriano ran hard, but Mexico had their hackles up and the goal stayed shut.
Full time: Brazil 3-0 Mexico.
Done.
Back-to-back hat-tricks and the sudden extra polish in Kaká’s game stunned everyone.
After the Greece match, fans who had travelled in found a different player and kept saying they had struck gold.
More people started following Brazil’s next games.
Ticket prices in the ground climbed until they looked ridiculous.
Kaká did not leave them hanging.
Anyone who watched him that night walked out saying a monster had dropped out of the sky.
Handsome, lethal, and playing like silk.
He was not leaving the other stars much room to breathe.