Sideline Cut: Jimmy Greaves, the popular pundit from middle England, never failed to draw a laugh in the days when he turned to his sidekick Ian St John to chortle, "It's a funny old game, Saint." Greavesy should have amended his side-splitting catchphrase to, "It's a funny old game, Saint. Except when it's not."
Wednesday night in Paris was a classic case in point. Sometimes sport can break your heart. Many millions of us settled down on Wednesday night thrilled beyond words at the prospect of the tricks and wizardry the great Ronaldinho would use to make the Champions League final his own. After all, the smiling Brazilian is known to all and sundry as The Greatest Player In The World and it stood to reason he would leave us all gasping for more.
And we gasped all right, but for all the wrong reasons. What we saw in the Champions League final was terrible and embarrassing and arguably should not have been broadcast at all. To say Ronaldinho, TGPITW, did not live up to his billing simply does no justice to the tale. His abdication of his duties as TGPITW was so outrageous I fully expected Tommy Gorman-Belfast to appear on our screens to appeal to the wayward Brazilian's conscience, with one of his powerful what-about-the-children-of-Ireland? wails.
If TGPITW had performed even a few volleys or trick passes or fancy lobs before the medal ceremony, there was a small chance he might have saved his reputation. Instead, he seemed quite happy to wander around the Stade de France celebrating with his Barcelona pals, seemingly unaware of just how far he had fallen in the eyes of fans all over the world. Obviously Ronaldinho doesn't listen to the wise words of Big Cas, Gilesy, Lawro, Eamo, Ronnie, Andy, Venners, all of whom have cautioned that you are only as good as your last game. And going by Wednesday night's game, TGPITW is rubbish.
The omens were bad from early on. When he moved to accept his first pass, I, like many millions around the world, leant eagerly forward, certain the Brazilian would start the show with his most famous trick. This involves making a complete cod of the opposing team, dancing this way and ducking that, so that five or six defenders fall in a heap and the rest just gape at him dumbfounded. With just the goalkeeper to beat, Ronaldinho then pauses for a moment and clips the ball in such a way it swerves like a frisbee around the helpless goalkeeper before flying like a bullet into the top corner.
It was on the strength of such moves that Ronaldinho became TGPITW and, no doubt, that so many fans turned up in Paris to see him. But he wasn't in the mood for this kind of tomfoolery against Arsenal, opting instead for the sensible but yawningly boring option of a "clever pass" to a strategically placed team-mate.
That, sadly, was about as good as it got for Ronaldinho lovers. Over the following 90 minutes, the poor man's game fell apart and it was distressing to see TGPITW being carried by team-mates. The most explicit example of this was when the fast and no-nonsense Samuel Eto'o set him up with an open goal by managing to hit an impossible pass that bounced off the Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann and back off the post before falling perfectly for Ronaldinho.
Given a straightforward hoof, the ball would have flown straight into the Arsenal net. But TGPITW somehow fell back as he connected, with the result that the ball went badly wide, shattering the expectations of children all over the world.
In a desperate attempt to elicit something from the star turn, players from both teams tried to rescue the situation, agreeing that poor Lehmann should vacate the Arsenal goal through a dubious sending-off. You could clearly see Lehmann himself mouthing at the referee: "Red-card me to blazes, man! Ronaldinho is having the proverbial mare." So he was red-carded.
Later in the game, attempting to nutmeg the Arsenal striker Thierry Henry, TGPITW kind of tripped over the ball and gave away a free. When Henry went to retrieve the ball, it was caught under Ronaldinho's leg and the chivalrous Arsenal man had to help his opponent to become untangled. At this point, it was difficult to watch what was obviously a complete nervous breakdown on the part of TGPITW.
It wasn't as if unfair expectations were placed on Ronaldinho's shoulders either. In numerous conversations, the cheerful Brazilian has claimed he loves scoring goals and likes nothing better than keeping the fans happy. And he can score: back in Brazil, where everybody is brilliant at soccer, he scored 23 in a single match not long ago. So it seemed only logical and fair he would happily knock in five or six in a game as important as the Champions League final.
And it is not as if he is not dedicated to his sport. They say that even when Ronaldinho is loafing around the house, listening to his beloved samba music or sipping ice-tea or doing the dishes, he has a football at his feet, carrying out toe taps and feints all day long. It must drive his family up the wall but that is the price you have to pay for living with a soccer genius.
One imagines Ronaldinho's refusal to do anything good on Wednesday night must have wrecked Fifa's hopes of "breaking" the US. There must have been dozens if not hundreds of US fans tuning in for what was probably billed as the European Soccer Ball Superbowl Series. When you tell the Yanks TGPITW in any sport is on show, they will reasonably expect him to do his thing, be it whacking baseballs out of stadiums or dropping 60 points on douche-bag opponents the way Michael Jordan used to. They would have expected Ronaldinho to run rings around Arsenal and score a hat-trick at least. What they got were isolated moments when the great man tried to control the ball only to have it ping away from him, leaving him holding his arms up in a gesture of despair that mirrored our own.
Thank God Frank Rikjaard had the good sense to avert what would have been a national catastrophe for Brazil by sending in Ronaldinho's compatriot Belletti, with the explicit instruction to score the winning goal. Belletti, a good professional but far from TGPITW, duly obliged and Ronaldinho was the first man up to hug him, seemingly uncaring it was his job to score.
Soccer is very precious about handing out the honour of TGPITW. So far only Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, Puskas and Eusebio have held it outright, although Georgie Best did manage to gatecrash the party. Most other brilliant players have to be content with being "mentioned in the same breath" as that stellar cast.
The litmus test of soccer greatness revolves, however, around the appellation preferred by RTÉ's veteran soccer man James "Jimmy" Magee. When greatness is bestowed upon a player, Jimmy names him in full. Hence, it was Edson Arantes do Nascimento etc, and Diego Maradona. When Ronaldinho earns his full name - which goes on for a bit - we will know he has arrived.
Let us hope Wednesday night was just a blip because the Brazilian seems like a thoroughly pleasant young man. But as of now, you would have to question if TGPITW is any good at football at all. Then again, maybe he is just saving himself for the World Cup. And when you are allegedly brilliant at football, it must be tantamount to a work of art to make yourself look "Vauxhall Conference" for a full 90 minutes.
As ITV's man behind the microphone screamed aghast at one point, "And the man who can do anything with a football has done nothing at all." Mmm. Maybe the boy is a bit special after all.
