Euroscene: When Brazilian World Cup-winner Rivaldo came through Belo Horizonte's Pampulha airport last Thursday, for once he was probably glad to find 250 fans blocking his way.
Eighteen months after playing a key part in Brazil's 2002 World Cup triumph, 31-year-old Rivaldo was returning home, not so much to play out the final years of a glittering career but rather to start out all over again.
Rivaldo had flown in on his way to his first day of work for his new club, reigning Brazilian champions Cruzeiro. His signing for the club, from Brazil's third largest city, had ended an autumn of incessant, almost inane speculation.
The point about Rivaldo, of course, was that, given his unhappiness and failure to claim a first-team place at AC Milan, he has been at the centre of continual speculation for most of the last year. At various times, he was destined for Tottenham Hotspur, Newcastle United, Wolverhampton Wanderers (this is not a joke), Liverpool, Chelsea and even Manchester United.
More recently, Espanol in Spain, Spartak Moscow in Russia, America in Mexico and Porto in Portugal were being touted as his next stop. Late in December the riddle was solved when Mansour Al-Balawi, president of Saudi Arabian side Al Ittihad, held a news conference to announce the definitive signing of Rivaldo. Furthermore, said Mansour Al Balawi, Rivaldo would arrive in Saudi Arabia on January 12th to begin training.
Not quite so fast, said Rivaldo's agent Carlos Arini. Rivaldo has not agreed anything yet. In the end, Rivaldo and his agent wrong-footed just about everyone when opting for a return to his Brazilian roots.
It is, of course, not unprecedented for great Brazilian players to return home to finish off their careers. Men like Brazil's 1994 World Cup hero Romario took that path. The difference between them and Rivaldo, however, concerns annus domini. At 31 (he will be 32 in April) and with arguably two top-level European seasons still in him, Rivaldo, unlike some of his illustrious compatriots and predecessors, was still being courted by some of Europe's makers and shakers.
Probably, after the miserable 18 months he has just spent at AC Milan, Rivaldo felt he needed an environment where people would be on his side. He made no secret about feeling "humiliated" by Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti this autumn, in a period when his first-team football was limited to a substitute appearance in the Champions League, without even a single Serie A outing.
When he scored for Brazil in a 1-1 World Cup qualifying draw with Peru in Lima in mid-November, Rivaldo told the hacks afterwards he was "just glad to be playing again". In his quiet, almost shy way, he pointed out that the World Cup qualifier had, in fact, been his first game since he had last turned out for Brazil in a friendly against Jamaica, over a month earlier.
In the funny old way of football, the sporting gods have dealt Rivaldo some contrasting hands over the last 18 months. After all, in July 2002 he had rounded off a winning World Cup tournament in which he, and not Ronaldo, was Brazil's best player - that is, according to the man who coached that Brazilian team, Felipe Scolari, now in charge of Portugal.
Yet, since then, little has gone right for him. Post-World Cup anti-climax, a knee injury, the break-up of his marriage and stiff competition for team places, first from Portugal's Rui Costa and then from the young Brazilian Kaka, all undermined his form and saw him effectively dropped by Milan. Things got so bad this autumn that a poll of 5,000 listeners to an Italian radio sports programme elected him "Worst Player of the Year".
Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira protested about this latest "award", calling it "an act of disrespect". Parreira is right. He still sees a key role for Rivaldo in Brazil's qualifying run through to the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany.
Helped by the support of Parreira and of the Cruzeiro coach, Vanderlei Luxemburgo, for whom Rivaldo had played in a Palmeiras side of the early 1990s before his departure for seven seasons in Europe, Rivaldo may well refind his best football. As he put it himself last week: "I just want to be happy again."
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