Brazilians stopped calling the World Cup by its name a long time ago. They refer to it by number. The 1970 victory is known as the 'Tri', because it was the third time they won it. In 1994 Romario & Co won the 'Tetra'. Romario, correspondingly, is not known as a world champion, but as a 'Tetra-champion'. In 1998 and in 2002, therefore, Brazilians were looking to win the 'Penta'. It was if they were not even after the same prize as the rest of us. The World Cup is almost a private competition, a personal challenge. And the terminology means that they never let go of the past. Each World Cup contains in its very title a reminder of former victories.
In 2002, for the first time since 1958, Brazil started a World Cup as outsiders. Since defeat seemed inevitable, there were those who even began to hope that it came quickly. Even the most enthusiastic fans could not disguise a trepidation and gloom. In Rio, there was a noticeable absence of the festive football murals and yellow-and-green bunting that I had seen in 1998. Nothing in the preparations seemed to be going right. During one of the last training kickabouts, Emerson, the captain, was put in goal and fell on his arm, causing an injury that would keep him out of the whole tournament.
Yet Brazil were dealt a lucky hand. They had been picked in the easiest group, together with Turkey, China and Costa Rica. By the time Brazil had beaten all three, favourites France, Argentina and Portugal were out of the competition and coach Luiz Felipe Scolari's men were gelling like a proper team. In the second phase, Italy and Spain went out, thanks to dubious refereeing decisions. As did Belgium, who had an apparently valid goal disallowed – against Brazil. After that game Brazil looked like winners. They beat England in the quarter-finals, which made them clear favourites. Brazil dispatched Turkey (again) in the semis and then Germany were seen off 2-0 in the final. Penta-champions at last.
Brazil were deserved winners in Korea and Japan. They won every game. They scored most goals. They played the most attractive football. They were – for all Scolari's famed negativity – creative and carefree. In retrospect, the victory consecrated a new golden age. The team will be remembered as the Brazil of the three Rs – the attacking triumvirate of Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho. And of Felipao, or Big Phil, the nickname that best summed up Scolari's paternalistic and coarse nature. He managed to let the three Rs play to the best of their potential. Never before had a national side's personality been so moulded in the coach's image. The press had dubbed the team the Scolari Family and its triumph was his greatest vindication.
The superstitious pointed out that not a drop of rain fell during any of Brazil's games, proof of divine intervention, since a downpour started minutes after the final against Germany. Of all Brazil's good fortune, the most important and resonant was the return of Ronaldo. It was the triumphant third act in an epic personal drama that, were it fiction, would be dismissed as far-fetched. Four years before he was the best player in the world, a youngster playing his first World Cup final, with the greatest prize in football within his grasp. Yet we all know what happened. The match marked the beginning of a very public plunge, from which many experts doubted he would ever return. He went through the purgatory of two serious knee injuries and the possibility that he would never play again.
He came good just in time. Felipao kept his faith in Ronaldo and chose him in every game even though he was not fully match fit, and in the weeks running up to the World Cup was hardly being called up by his club side, Internazionale. Ronaldo proved all his doubters wrong. Not only did Brazil win the title, but Ronaldo won the Golden Boot for highest scorer and equalled Pelé's record for goals scored in World Cups. In the most prestigious game – the final – he scored both goals. Not even Roy of the Rovers did that. 'Ronaldo copied the classic journey of the mythological hero who descends into hell and then comes back to change history. He came back from the abyss to rewrite the 1998 Cup final in France. He is the first mortal who has been able to go back in time to rectify his own biography,' wrote Luis Fernando Verissimo in O Globo.
Ronaldo got the headlines, but for me the quiet hero of the World Cup was Cafu. When Emerson pulled out with injury, Cafu, the right wingback, was made captain. He became the first and only player to play in three consecutive World Cup finals. Cafu is known for his good nature and simple humility. Almost as soon as he had won the World Cup, he asked a colleague to write his home neighbourhood 'Jardim Irene' on his shirt. His name is short for Cafuringa, a nickname he got early in his career for looking like another player with the same name. Yet the press noted that it sounds as if it ought to be an abbreviation of 'cafuzo', which is the term given to the mixed race descendants of blacks and Indians. When Cafu stood on the podium with the Cup in the air, his home scribbled on his shirt, he seemed to be a perfect representation of the Brazilian people.
Why were the pundits so wrong about Brazil in 2002? With hindsight, the humiliating qualification period of the previous two years was just a bad patch – not the beginning of Brazilian football's terminal decline. After a year in which they seemed to lose their confidence and their hunger, Brazil rose to the occasion when it mattered. Brazil has produced many of the sport's most talented individuals and it looks likely that this will continue. But the national team is in danger of gaining a split personality – brilliant at World Cups and underachievers between them. World-beaters incapable of performing to a high standard in less important matches. With five World Cup titles behind them – two more than anyone else – this dichotomy seems likely to get more extreme. Brazil has as much chance of not qualifying for the 2006 World Cup as it has of winning it – and each is highly possible.
The disorganisation of Brazilian football is as endemic as the on-pitch successes. After the flight home from Japan, the squad arrived in the morning in Brasilia to meet the president and parade through the streets. Most of the players then flew to Rio, where they paraded on the top of a lorry for five hours. At 2 a.m. – after sixty hours with no sleep – the cortege turned back to the airport, even though they hadn't reached their scheduled destination of Copacabana beach. Fans started to pelt the squad bus with stones and smashed its windows.
The victory caused much self-reflection, and somehow highlighted the country's shortcomings in other areas. 'Why don't we have, as a country, half the success that we do in football?' wrote one newspaper a few days later. Yet the need for football victories somehow propels the country forward. After the final whistle at Yokohama – and before even Cafu held up the trophy – the Brazilian TV commentator exclaimed, in breathless euphoria, that the country had just arrived in the age of the Hexa.