The Brazilian predicament was once unimaginable. Brazil is the winningest team in World Cup history, the only nation to have contested every tournament since the first back in 1930 (hosted and won by Uruguay). Brazil won the 1994 World Cup played here in the United States, then went to the 1998 Finals in France behind its gifted, young scoring star Ronaldo, whom many regarded as the most talented player, in a lustrous array, to wear the yellow-and-blue since the immortal Pele. But Ronaldo was somehow injured before that contest, a mystery that has never been adequately explained, and the team’s play was pedestrian. France, buoyed by its frenzied home fans, dominated the match, exposed weakness in the Brazilian back line and routed the favorites 3-0.
It has been pretty much all downhill for Brazil since. Ronaldo has never fully recovered, and the national team has had four coaches since that loss. The players seem physically sapped and emotionally drained by the constant back-and-forth from Europe that they must endure during qualifying. The team is further exacerbated by its lucrative Nike exhibition schedule. Once the progenitor and last practitioner of “the beautiful game,” the soccer dance that charmed fans around the world, the Brazilians have become just another plodding mediocrity. If Brazil manages a win at home Wednesday, over a Venezuelan squad that has won four straight, it will still claim South America’s fourth and final automatic spot (with Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador having already qualified). But that result will hardly trigger any celebrations in Brazil, where the fans have become disenchanted watching their team stumble though four straight road losses, a dispirited and dispiriting 1-1 home tie with lowly Peru, and just the other day a 3-1 loss to Bolivia in La Paz. “Our team needs a psychic viagara,” said a Brazilian samba musician.
Germany may need something even more drastic, possibly a heart transplant. It has a far more daunting task than Brazil, if it hopes to qualify tomorrow for its 13th straight World Cup. (It last missed out in 1950 when it didn’t have a national team–a residual effect of the War.) The Germans are in a two-game playoff with a tough Ukrainian team. Having salvaged a 1-1 tie in Kiev on Saturday, Germany needs only a home win on Wednesday to make the 32-team World Cup field. (Ties could send either team through depending on the score; away goals is the tie-breaker, so a 0-0 tie favors Germany, while 2-2 is a win for Ukraine.)
“Only” and “home” were once synonymous with victory for Germany. Indeed Germany had only lost one World Cup qualifier, home or away, in its history. Just one defeat in 60 games. That is until September. Germany needed only a home win against England at Olympic Stadium in Munich to secure its World Cup spot. Germany had already beaten the English at Wembley and when it scored in the opening moments, seemed a shoo-in for the Finals. Instead the Brits scored five straight goals to rout Germany. “The Debacle From Munich,” “A Black Day in Germany,” “More Than a Defeat…A National Disgrace,” trumpeted the German newspapers the next day.
The Germans haven’t been as shocked by anything since a wall disappeared overnight more than a decade ago. But there was more soccer disillusionment to come when the English, who should have been unbeatable after their German masterpiece, only managed a draw at home against Greece. Once again Germany had to win at home to punch its World Cup ticket, this time against a mediocre Finnish squad. The result: a dreary 0-0 tie and an unwelcome pair of playoff games against Ukraine.
Whatever happens in Brazil and Germany tomorrow, the World Cup will already be welcoming some first-timers including Ecuador, Senegal and the world’s most populous soccer-playing nation, China. And if the ball bounces right in the European playoffs, these World Cup rookies could be joined by such unfamiliar Cup competitors as Slovenia and Turkey. In America’s region, the epidemic of parity almost claimed its perennial soccer superpower among its victims. Mexico went down to its final game on Sunday before it ousted pesky Honduras, which has only been to one World Cup, in 1982.
The U.S. can hardly be counted as one of the world’s elite soccer powers, but an ever-dwindling number of national teams can match the U.S.’s recent record for at least showing up. With 25 of the 32 World Cup qualifiers now known, only five other nations–Italy, Spain, Argentina, South Korea and Cameroon–can so far rival the Yanks’ four straight World Cup appearances going back to Italy 1990. The Americans were embarrassed, make that mortified, in France 1998 when its squabbling squad went three strikes–to Germany, Iran and Yugoslavia–and out; now the United States could, in a strange irony, be the only team from that group to get another crack in 2002.
Not that the U.S. can afford to grow the least bit complacent about its string of World Cup appearances. The vagaries of parity worked on America’s behalf this time around. Last month, in the biggest upset in this region’s qualifying competition, Trinidad & Tobago–on the road, winless and playing a man down as a result of a first-half ejection–beat Honduras 1-0 to send the U.S. to Japan/South Korea. But parity cuts all ways. If the U.S., as its growing number of soccer fans hope, is in fact, catching up to the rest of the world, the rest of this region is surely catching up to the U.S. too. It’s unlikely that the U.S. or indeed any nation anywhere will ever have the luxury of an easy road to the World Cup again.
