The call of Ronaldinho
Top scorer in the current Brazilian championship is twice former FIFA World Player of the Year, Ronaldinho. After sleepwalking his way through the last five years, the ex-Barcelona great has woken up. His coach at Flamengo Vanderlei Luxemburgo may have performed a masterstroke in mid-June, when he substituted Ronaldinho with two minutes remaining in a match purely so the player could be booed by his own fans. It was cruel medicine, but maybe a dose of public humiliation was what was needed.
Since then it has been a different story. True, Ronaldinho is not the player he once was. That burning acceleration has gone. But Luxemburgo has taken this into consideration and moved him higher up the field, closer to the opposing goal, where with a mixture of cunning and talent Ronaldinho has been scoring and setting up chances for others.
On Saturday he made space beautifully in the last minute against Coritiba and curled in a precise cross which led to the only goal of the game, taking Flamengo to the top of the table - and Flamengo's millions of fans constitute a powerful lobby in favour of a player seeking a Brazil recall.
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