Ten things I learned about life and soccer from the 2002 World Cup

There is a football God, and despite the wild twists and turns of this year's tournament, He's still Brazilian.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Jul 2, 2002 | Maybe the championship game of World Cup 2002, in which Brazil defeated Germany 2-0 in front of a television audience estimated at 1.5 billion people, or approximately one-fourth of the planet's population, wasn't an all-time classic. But it capped off a tournament full of thrills and surprises with style and returned the soccer universe -- so disordered over the course of the last month -- to a state of almost blissful equilibrium. As any soccer fan can testify, a World Cup in which Brazil goes unbeaten and untied and hoists the trophy for a record fifth time, all without quite seeming to play up to its potential, only proves that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Now comes a brief respite for fans of a sport that has virtually no off-season (most of the major European professional leagues will begin their new seasons before the end of August). The major story lines of World Cup 2002 have been well explored by now: The renaissance of Ronaldo, Brazil's one-time boy genius turned sympathetic survivor; the quiet resurgence of Germany; the collapse of favored teams from Argentina, France, Italy and Portugal; the emergence of Asian soccer; the revelation that guys from the heartland of the United States are suddenly able to compete in the world's game.

Beneath these narratives, however, lie certain Immutable Truths about life and soccer, some of which are mutually contradictory and almost all of which will be made irrelevant by the 2006 World Cup in Germany, if not sooner.

There is a God

Mind you, I don't think S/He should make an appearance in the Pledge of Allegiance, necessarily, but World Cup 2002 at least temporarily resolved my doubts on this perplexing question. Without a Supreme Being of some description (preferably not Alanis Morrissette, as in the film "Dogma"), how can you account for the stunning odyssey of Ronaldo, the Brazilian forward who, at the ripe old age of 25, has lived through a death-and-regeneration cycle worthy of the epic of Gilgamesh or F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Last Tycoon"?

After suffering an epileptic seizure or panic attack or escargot poisoning or something on the morning of the 1998 World Cup final, and lolling around the field during Brazil's listless 3-0 loss to France, Ronaldo -- then regarded as the best player in the world -- virtually disappeared from world soccer. He has hardly played for his club team, Italy's Inter Milan, since then and took no significant role in Brazil's troubled World Cup qualifying process. Whether the primary factor that sent Ronaldo to the sidelines for so long was physical or psychological never became clear; most likely it was some combination of the two. Certainly most fans assumed he was washed up, a troubled shadow of his former self, à la Darryl Strawberry or England's one-time wunderkind Paul Gascoigne.

So all Ronaldo did in this tournament was to knock home eight goals, including both his team's scores in the championship game -- one opportunistic and one flat-out brilliant -- to lead all scorers and match the career World Cup total (12) of Pelé, the greatest player in the sport's history. If Ronaldo is not quite in that class it's because nobody is. But what he accomplished this year, establishing himself again as the world's best attacking player after four years of near-total absence from the sport, ranks among the greatest achievements in athletic history. You might compare it to Jesse Owens' Berlin Olympics, or to Babe Ruth's 60-home-run season (at a time when no one else had ever hit 40). Based on degree of difficulty and sheer improbability, it's bigger than anything Jim Brown or Michael Jordan or Barry Bonds could ever dream about.

OK, maybe there isn't a God

Talk to German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn about it. Or for that matter English goalkeeper David Seaman. We'll get to them in due course.

Beware of conventional wisdom

Good defense will beat good offense. Nobody can beat Argentina this year. France might be better than they were in '98. The U.S., South Korea and Japan are plucky and likable little teams, but they're not ready for prime time. Portugal's "golden generation" of stars could go all the way. England is for real this time. It might be Spain's turn at last. China could surprise us. Germany has no chance. Brazil has no chance.

OK, nobody actually said that Brazil had no chance. But the rest of those views were widely held when the tournament started. Some of them were held by me, and probably by you too.

Beware of the new conventional wisdom

Now we're supposed to believe that American soccer has arrived and that, based on their startling (and, yes, convincing) wins over Portugal and Mexico, the U.S. is poised to win its first-ever World Cup. Unless South Korea or Japan gets there first.

All three of those teams, and their fans, are going to learn over the course of the next four years how great their accomplishments of 2002 really were. Because they won't happen again for a long, long time. Winning the World Cup is exceedingly difficult. Only seven countries have ever done it, all of them traditional soccer powers, all of them in Europe or South America. (England, which invented the game, has only lifted the Cup once. Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Chile and Colombia never have.)

Don't get me wrong; the American team deserved its victories, and outplayed Germany for most of their quarterfinal matchup. But let's also remember that the Yanks deserved their 3-1 thrashing at the hands of Poland and basically snuck into the second round by a fluke; the team has speed, confidence and more ability than any previous U.S. side, but it still lacks size, depth and consistency.

By the time the 2006 World Cup rolls around, the American team should be better than it is now. Veteran leaders like Earnie Stewart, Cobi Jones and Brian McBride will probably be gone, but Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley and Clint Mathis should still be in their primes and the pipeline is richer with young talent than at any time in U.S. soccer history. But something else will have changed too: No opponent will take the Yanks lightly anymore. They'll be a target team, a side the premier European and Latin American teams will especially relish beating.

Imagine, if you can, what the scene will be like the next time the U.S. team plays a serious match in Mexico City's Azteca Stadium, with 110,000 customers in attendance. If the Americans' 2-0 victory in Jeonju, South Korea, on June 17 was American soccer's coming-out party, it was a national day of mourning south of the border. No one who saw the Mexicans' brutal, foul-plagued play in that game, or their refusal to shake hands and swap jerseys afterward, will underestimate the Mexican desire for vengeance. The agenda for our boys in Azteca will be simple: Lose with dignity (actually, they've never won there), avoid the flying bottles and get out alive.

Next Page: Savoring a nation's highest sports triumph: South Korea's golden goal

• View blog reactions