Luis Fabiano is ready to embrace ugly football as long as it gets them back the World Cup. The illusion of beautiful Brazilian football is over.
“If it is necessary to play dirty to win, we will do it, what counts at the World Cup is to win,” said Fabiano at Brazil’s training camp.
The irony of a Brazilian striker talking about winning ugly should not be lost to anyone.
This is true because there are no more new You Tube clips of Ronaldinho dribbling the ball through airports, toilets, and locker rooms. The icons of the new Brazil generation under Dunga are goalies like Julio Cesar, goal scoring defenders like Maicon and Lucio, and tough holding midfielders like Felipe Melo.
It is left to the Argentinians to cling to magic realism. They will live and die through Leo Messi. That makes them beautifully doomed figures in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.