Sideline Cut: Ronaldinho's goal against Chelsea on Tuesday night was the stupendous highlight of 48 hours that made it feel as if big-time soccer still matters after all. The goal was such that it felt like a modern classic even as it happened, like Zinedine Zidane's famous volley in Glasgow or Ryan Giggs's FA Cup glory run against Arsenal.
It made jaded old soccer men sound boyish again and must have encouraged thousands of fans all over Europe break into instant debates about the greatest goals of all time.
The feat was uncanny. To identify the only possible scoring angle was one thing. But to hit the ball with such velocity from a dead-still position while surrounded by blue shirts, with no space to effect the conventional mechanics of kicking, made it seem like a trick shot or some high-quality flick from a Subbuteo figure.
The goal was unnatural. But it was the few seconds that preceded it, when Ronaldinho held the ball at his feet and played with the frozen collection of Chelsea defenders, sashaying his hips like it was carnival time in Rio, that completed the sequence. It was as if he was celebrating in advance.
It ensured that for all Jose Mourinho's strange finger clicking and galloping around the field in celebration long after the result had ceased to matter, the memory of a wild and unexpected night of football would belong to the Brazilian player.
But whatever about posterity, the hour belonged to the doe-eyed Chelsea manager, whose antics brought to mind the more extreme bouts of showmanship perfected by Frankie Dettori in his heyday. You hesitate to think what Mourinho would have tried had there been a spare thoroughbred wandering around Stamford Bridge, but such was his demeanour that his waving at the masses from a steed, like an old war general, would hardly have made him appear any more imperious.
There are two ways of viewing Mourinho's indulgent post-match hysteria. The Chelsea-versus-Barcelona game was one of those rare contests completely engrossing from the off, with its extravagant succession of goals out of the blue, Ronaldinho's transcendent moment and then John Terry's controversial winning goal. Just watching it was nerve wracking so it is easy to imagine that all those inside the stadium were swept away on the tide of human emotion they generated.
Certainly, Frank Rijkaard seemed bereft as he lounged disconsolately against the dugout with seconds to go and the man-handling Ronaldinho was subjected to as he exited the field was an unforgivable shame. The dejection of the Barca players was the backdrop to Mourinho's cavorting. It seemed a graceless conclusion to an evening that deserved epic status.
Mourinho does not have to apologise for his behaviour. Like so many people, he could well have been in thrall to his own emotions: everyone (with the probable and honourable exception of the unflappable Damien Duff) looked to be on the edge afterwards.
And it might have been Mourinho's peculiar way of demonstrating to the potential kings of Europe that he has no intention of abdicating a throne he has claimed to be all his own. For all Abramovich's millions, this is still Chelsea he is leading, a club with a long history of meandering lack of achievement, a distant bridesmaid to their cousins in the north of London or up in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Mourinho's odd little quirks - sometimes his tics and jerks after his team scores are reminiscent of Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets - have helped make him the sensation of the season. Of course, they would just seem crazy if he were not wringing the performances he has from Chelsea. As long as his team keeps winning he could appear in the dugout dressed up in a Zorro outfit and it would be portrayed as another premeditated and ingenious ploy to unsettle the opposition. Mourinho has decided he needs to become the physical embodiment of the belief and heart that now evidently courses through his collection of players. It is his entitlement, of course.
But sometimes it is not very graceful and he managed to besmirch the magnificence of Wednesday night as a football occasion by forgetting about the visitors from Barcelona before they even left the field. It would be a shame if he leads Chelsea to European greatness and in the process loses the respect of clubs he formerly worked with.
Whatever the opinions on Mourinho - Eamon Dunphy said on television he had behaved like an ass - one thing was certain: he was incandescent and captivating in comparison to the grandmasters of the English game. It was not that Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger looked forlorn after their insipid exits during the week that shocked so much as that their departure seemed little more than an irrelevance.
Overnight, it seems, the two adversaries have fallen out of vogue and if they have struggled through the years to find one common point of agreement, surely the diminutive and energetic Mourinho has provided one for them. With Liverpool the unlikely representatives alongside Chelsea in the last eight of Europe's elite competition, the absence of the Premiership's traditional big two does not seem to matter as much as it might.
It is apt because Chelsea and Liverpool are at the core of the contemporary struggle for the soul of English football. If Ronaldinho gave us the defining soccer action of the week, Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez provided the most heartening gesture. By walking into an Irish bar in Cologne to watch the Chelsea-Barca game with the fans, he reawakened a tradition of the common touch that harks back to Bill Shankly. The notion of a bunch of fans singing, "Rafa, get the ales in" is so delightful and so at odds with what we know of big-time sport and professional soccer it seems too good to be true. But Benitez has won hearts in a less obvious and quieter way than Mourinho, leading a great football club in danger of going shabby through a tricky season. Injury hit and cash strapped and no longer fashionable, Liverpool might just have in Benitez a wiser and more visionary manager than is yet apparent.
So often watching the hyped soccer games involves the gnawing sensation that the outcome does not truly matter, that the players are just going through the motions of really caring and hurting and that, come season's end, they are headed for Barbados and luxury. For most aspiring professional footballers just getting to the big league is the dream, the leap to an unimaginable lifestyle. The old ideal - the winning of cups and medals - has become an afterthought, a bonus that may or may not present itself along the path of accumulating millions.
But for whatever reason, the fare in evidence this week reignited the hope that it is not always about the money. There was raw emotion and overwrought behaviour and the sense that, where Ferguson and perhaps even Wenger are concerned, a light was all but snuffed out.
It would be funny if Liverpool and Chelsea were to encounter one another later this season on one of those tremulous nights of European soccer, the old and new cultures of English soccer meeting at the narrow pass.
Benitez has, of course, made mistakes this year, probably many more than Mourinho. But he has shown such patience and grace through a season of mostly disappointments that the Chelsea ringmaster will know there is nothing left in his bag of tricks to unhinge Benitez. It is pure fantasy of course but as Ronaldinho so unforgettably demonstrated during the week, one of the reasons we watch sport is for those rare and scarcely believable moments.
The penniless aristocrats of English soccer against its nouveau riche is an irresistible thought but perhaps one Mourinho would prefer to avoid. You cannot kill a man twice, as they say. Chelsea and Mourinho have already dispensed with Liverpool. To meet the vanquished again - well, sport can work in weird ways.
