Brazil's Fans Lament Demise of the Beautiful Game

FRANKFURT, July 2 — As he waited for a train Sunday morning, Elias Sader said that while Brazil's run toward a sixth World Cup title had ended, the partying had not.

"We have five championships," said Sader, 30, of São Paulo, "Let someone else have a chance."

Not all Brazilians possessed such equanimity after France and its exquisite midfielder, Zinédine Zidane, stunned Brazil, 1-0, in the quarterfinals here Saturday night.

"A big disappointment," Norman Julio, 34, a Rio de Janeiro native who lives in Shanghai, said in the train station here. "The team was not hungry. They need to play the guys who are not so famous but are hungrier."

Yet again, Brazil, a perennial favorite, could not win a World Cup in Europe, where it has not prevailed since 1958, when Pelé was a teenager and the Cup was held in Sweden.

Carlos Alberto Parreira, Brazil's coach, and a number of players seemed shocked after the sluggish defeat, in which Brazil did not play with its accustomed flair for long stretches.

"Getting knocked out was a situation we hadn't prepared for," Parreira said.

If the Brazilian team was not prepared for defeat, the Brazilian news media certainly were.

Parreira and midfielder Ronaldinho, who had an inconsequential tournament though he is considered the world's best player, were assigned the brunt of the blame. Parreira was criticized for abandoning Brazil's engaging style, known as the beautiful game, and for relying on a more cautious, defensive posture reflecting modern soccer.

It seemed not to matter that Parreira had brought Brazil a World Cup title in 1994 in the United States. O Globo, a leading Rio daily, described Parreira's current style as "football without fun, without life, without joy, without personality, without the Brazilian way of playing."

The newspaper Folha de São Paulo called Parreira a "complete disaster." One of its columnists wrote that "anyone who refuses to play the beautiful game deserves every punishment."

Ronaldinho was blistered for his seeming indifference. He was featured in commercials and on magazine covers around the world but failed to meet expectations, not unlike the buildup and disappointment for the skier Bode Miller of the United States at the Winter Olympics in Turin.

Estado de São Paulo ran a headline that said, "Ronaldinho was the big letdown of the Cup." The article said he "played badly, he didn't dribble, he didn't have a shot at goal, he misplaced passes and did not, at any moment, take responsibility."

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Saturday's defeat, the paper said of Ronaldinho, "was a portrait of his participation in the World Cup: apathetic, bureaucratic, mediocre and afraid of deciding."

The criticism seemed to resonate with Brazil's fans here. Marcello Sader, 34, who waited in the train station Sunday with his brother Elias, said: "We didn't have anyone in the middle to get the ball to Ronaldo. That was a big failure."

Cafu and Roberto Carlos, Brazil's aging outside backs, also came under heavy criticism.

Ronaldo, overweight and lacking mobility, did not assert himself at forward until the final minutes. Later, Brazil's players, numbed by defeat, made no excuses. "We lost because we didn't impose our style of play," the midfielder Kaká said.

Ronaldo said, "France was the better team."

Emerson, another midfielder, said, "I'm sad because we made a lot of people cry, including my family."

Some Brazilian supporters apparently did more than cry. According to Agence France-Presse, Nilda Amorim, 61, of Rio was rushed to the hospital just after Saturday's match.

"She's in an oxygen tent," a friend of Amorim's told the news agency. "She couldn't handle the tension of the last minutes."

Brazil could not tie the score in a frenetic finish after Thierry Henry of France volleyed in a free kick from Zidane in the 57th minute.

Zidane, the 34-year-old French midfielder, maintained his calm in that frantic stretch. He has postponed retirement plans for at least one more match. He retired from the national team in 2004 but returned last year.

Saturday, he skewered Brazil with his sharp passing and theatrical dribbling, just as he did eight years earlier with two goals in a 3-0 victory over Brazil in the final of the 1998 World Cup.

"Zidane was the magician in the game," Pelé said. Franz Beckenbauer, Germany's soccer icon, said simply that Zidane was "one of the greatest players in history."

Michel Platini, the former French star, told Agence France-Presse: "Technically, I think he is the king of what's fundamental in the game — control and passing. I don't think anyone can match him when it comes to controlling or receiving the ball."

The French press, which has been warring with Zidane after calling him too old to be effective, gushed with enthusiasm Sunday, even after Zidane refused to speak with reporters at a postmatch news conference.

La Provence called Zidane a "master without equal." In terms of aggressiveness and "beautiful gestures," the paper said, "he was more Brazilian than the Brazilians."