Just off the Avenue Maurice Chevalier at Ozoir-La-Ferriere, where Brazil have made their World Cup headquarters, Roberto Carlos is practising free-kicks with as little success as on the competitive field of play during these past five weeks.
His efforts, rather than drawing saves from the goalkeepers Claudio Taffarel and Dida, are testing only the height and elasticity of the 20-foot fences around the ground. This being the usual playful Brazilian public training exercise, failure brings only the familiar toothy grin from Roberto Carlos, kitted out in a Coca-Cola training bib over the famous yellow national shirt.
The session is a bit half-hearted with a great deal of showboating for the 3,000 or so fans who scream like teenage girls at a Boyzone concert whenever one of their heroes strays towards the fences.
If Roberto Carlos shows no displeasure at his failure to demonstrate his full powers with a dead ball, his mood turns darker when he is asked about his inability to convert a single free-kick during Brazil's run to tomorrow's World Cup final.
He arrived here with the reputation of a man whose left foot could impart more implausible spin and bend on a ball than a combination of Shane Warne and Uri Geller, dipping and curving dead balls past defensive walls powerless to combat them. In the World Cup, however, his kicks have possessed all the accuracy and explosive powers of Scud missiles.
He blames this on the light Adidas balls and the even lighter head of his captain Dunga, whom he accuses of hogging all the freekicks on the edge of the box which he believes should rightfully belong to him. He says: "I don't know why it is, that with my abilities Dunga gets to take all the easy free-kicks close to the penalty box. I am always left taking them from long distance, sometimes even from the halfway line."
This may be a slight exaggeration, though he did take one from 35 yards against Holland in the semi-final which popped off the end of his boot and rolled along the ground like a tee shot from a non-handicap golfer.
It was a humiliating moment for a man who has earned the title of the best free-kick expert in the world, following in the best traditions of Brazilian players. Mysteriously, though, neither he nor the dead-ball masters from the other 31 teams have brought their skills to life here.
France's defence is the best at this tournament, which will put more pressure on Roberto Carlos to make more accurate use of freekicks, if he can get the ball off Dunga at a range when he does not need to line up the effort with field binoculars.
It was against France in last summer's Tournoi that he scored one of the greatest free-kicks recorded when the ball appeared to be heading so wide of the goal that, if you view the television replays, you can see the crowd taking evasive action behind the goal.
"Yes, it would be nice to do that against France in the final," he says, "but that was a very special effort. It will not be easy to repeat, especially with the lighter ball." You can bet, though, that during the closed training sessions during these past few days, Roberto Carlos has been practising with deadly intent.
