Wizard Ronaldinho casts a spell

Ronaldinho waves to his fans in Chennai on Sunday. (Photo: E.K. Sanjay)

“Sorry, please come again ” was the near unanimous reaction of a few of the scribes who converged at a plush hotel in Chennai on Sunday, when told they would have their first major brush with divinity.

Up until then, they were readying themselves to pack their belongings and leave the place unsure of whether they would get to meet the one individual they had been chasing like a pack of greyhounds for days. It was then time for them to suspend their disbelief when they received a timely alert that they would indeed get to meet the man who once had the entire world at his feet.

Perhaps that someone in question has complete mastery over anything that is spherical in shape, be it football or the world that he so often set on fire.

This was a man who, when he hit the glorious heights of pomp and splendour, had an uncanny knack of leaving both his devout followers and bewildered opponents dazed. When it was time for those journalists to rid themselves of the web of awe they were merrily trapped in, there he was the pre-eminent showstopper of this era or any other — Ronaldinho Gaucho, from the land that gave ‘Beautiful Football’ to the world at large.

He is this veritable dose of Brazilian flavour that has been creating quite a rage across Chennai, since the time he blew kisses to his adoring supporters on his arrival in the city five days ago.

We could sense that not all is well with the world we inhabit seeing the travails of the Selecao, who, it seemed were born only to win, yet are now struggling to stitch together a good sequence of wins.

Himself being a World Cup winner, and the proud owner of two Ballon d’Or trophies, Ronaldinho, with droopy eyes and that famous toothy grin intact, said the current generation were a trifle short on luck.

“Brazil always had a profusion of great talent. The current team is not as bad as it’s being made out to be,” said the 36-year-old, who is in the city to take part in the Premier Futsal tournament. He is the captain of the Goa 5’s franchisee.

Quizzed on what went through the mind of a genius before attempting ‘that’ free-kick against England at the 2002 World Cup quarter-final, Ronaldinho, with the aid of an interpreter, provided revealing insights into his attention to detail. “We watched a lot of videos of David Seaman (the then England goalkeeper) in the lead-up to that quarterfinal. We figured out that he had this tendency to stand a few feet ahead at the time of a free-kick being taken. We detected that flaw and I sent the ball in.”

Touching upon his one-time illustrious teammate at Barcelona, Lionel Messi, the Brazilian said he still stays in regular touch with him. “Messi is clearly the best of this generation by a mile. International football will be poorer without him, now that he quit Argentina. I believe Messi is doing to Neymar what I did to him in his early days,” he said.