Man who will not be king

to St Denis on July 12 to win their fifth championship, there will be those who believe Zagallo had nothing to do with it.

The 66-year-old veteran of the campaigns in Sweden, Chile, Mexico and the United States must be a man of extraordinary resilience, so inured to his nation’s demands that he is unlikely to have felt much relief after victory in the opening match. Yet he knows that the slightest falter against Morocco next Tuesday or Norway a week later will havethe whole country down on his head again.

But although Zagallo’s position appears to have been undermined by the recent secondment of Zico as his assistant, in ambiguous circumstances, the chief coach seems to have the confidence of his players. "Zagallo was a player, and he understands us. That’s essential," Ronaldo, the team’s biggest star, said before yesterday’s game.

Against Scotland, in a match of sufficient quality and incident to dispel the fears of timidity that traditionally surround the opening fixture, he showed that he has no intention of varying the pattern which proved so effective during the 1994 tournament, at which he acted as a de luxe assistant to the chief coach, Carlos Alberto Parreira. Two big central defenders, two attacking full-backs, a holding midfield player, three "creatives" and a pair of strikers represents the pattern that provides Brazilian players with a satisfactory blend of security and flexibility.

The raw, untreated Brazilian philosophy of football could be seenmost clearly in the first-half performance of Rivaldo, the 26-year-old playmaker who won the Spanish League with Barcelona last season. For 45 minutes he dominated the game, teasing the Scottish defenders with his feints and dodges, guiding and encouraging Ronaldo with passes of perfect weight and angle, using his own shooting power when the opportunity presented itself.

It was the perfect No. 10 display, and good enough to disguise the fact that, thanks to the insipid performance of Giovanni, his Barcelona team-mate, Brazil were effectively playing with 10 men.

Once Leonardo had taken Giovanni’s place at half-time, and after the precocious Denilson had come on, midway through the second period, for the willing but hardly lethal Bebeto, Brazil were able to show off the talents of four of the world’s greatest left-footed players, the others being Rivaldo and Roberto Carlos. Surely, there were moments when their intricate approach play was like watching Roberto Rivelino in a hall of mirrors.