Ronaldo: Brazil legend's beautiful rebirth at 2002 World Cup remembered | OneFootball

As the 2002 World Cup loomed large on the horizon it was a race against time for Ronaldo to be involved. Initially due to a ruptured tendon in his knee, by the end of the 2001/02 campaign, since November 1999 he had played just 17 games of competitive club football for Internazionale and in one of those his kneecap had effectively exploded.

Between the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, Ronaldo was restricted to just 38 Serie A appearances, during which he had still managed to plunder 24 goals. For much of his time at the San Siro, he had been an expensive elephant in the room as his underachieving club struggled to make an impact in the fight for the biggest prizes.

With the 2002 tournament approaching, Ronaldo had clawed his way back to fitness and with a flurry of goals in the spring he proved to Luiz Felipe Scolari that he was prepared and sharp enough to lead Brazil’s attempt to win a fifth World Cup, in South Korea and Japan.

When Ronaldo opened the scoring against Malaysia in a pre-World Cup fixture in Kuala Lumpur toward the end of May 2002, it had been his first international goal in well over two and a half years.

Contrary to his abilities on the pitch, when it to came the broader picture of his career, timing hadn’t always been a speciality of Ronaldo’s. All too often he had been in the right place at exactly the wrong time.

The 1998 World Cup final remains an enigma wrapped in a mystery when it comes to the part played by Ronaldo. Reputedly subject to a seizure just hours before the game, his name had been glaringly absent from the Brazil team sheet which had been released to the media not much more than an hour before kick-off, only for him to be reincluded by his coach, Mario Zagallo, shortly before the start of the game.

An ineffectual performance in a 3-0 defeat to the hosts France, at the Stade de France, had led to a Brazilian parliamentary commission being set up to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Conspiracists were in their element and the run of injuries for Ronaldo across the next four seasons simply added fuel to the flames.

By the time the 2002 World Cup rolled around there were widespread doubts that he could ever return to the levels he had displayed prior to his knee problems.

Without Ronaldo, Brazil had limped through their qualifying campaign, losing six times on their travels, inclusive of against Bolivia and a struggling Chile who finished bottom of CONMEBOL qualification.

In Ronaldo’s absence, Rivaldo and the ageing Romário had shouldered the goalscoring duties that carried Brazil to the finals, yet arguments and indiscipline would result in the latter not making Scolari’s squad for the far east.

Romário had been a huge influence on Ronaldo. He was the man who had taken the then 17-year-old under his wing during the 1994 World Cup, where he helped persuade the teenager that a prospective move to PSV Eindhoven would make the perfect introduction to European football for the following season.

So, while Scolari might have been happy to exclude Romário, Ronaldo would have felt his absence keenly.

Scolari did however have an ace up his sleeve. As Romário was ushered aside, his place was taken by the exceptionally gifted Ronaldinho, thus creating an attacking triumvirate alongside Ronaldo and Rivaldo that would be either the making or breaking of Brazilian hopes.

Brazil began their bid for World Cup glory in Ulsan, against a peak of their powers Turkey, who had gone in at the interval nursing a deserved 1-0 lead.

Ronaldo was the man to settle his teams’ nerves, when procuring an equaliser within five minutes of the resumption, converting a magical Rivaldo cross not with a driving header, but instead an outstretched right-footed volley.

Brazil would go on to pick off a controversial victory against their stubborn opponents thanks to a Rivaldo penalty, obtained just after the Brazilian number ten had embarrassingly manufactured a red card for Alpay Özalan, when feigning a face injury at the corner flag after being struck by the ball as the Turkish defender fired it toward him.

By the time the uproarious end to Brazil’s opening game unfolded, Ronaldo had already been withdrawn by Scolari with fitness management in mind, but the outcome had certainly pivoted on his contribution, on a day when he had brazenly run at the Turkish defence with all the swagger of old.

Five days later, in Seogwipo, Ronaldo’s involvement in his second game again ended shortly beyond the 70th minute.

This time, there was no ambiguity over the result, as Scolari’s team had been 3-0 ahead at half time, with China’s hard-work ethos undone whenever the whim took Brazil. Ronaldo added the fourth and final goal ten minutes into the second half, with a poachers six-yard-box finish.

Already through to the knockout stages, Scolari allowed a little more freedom of expression in Brazil’s final group game, against Costa Rica in Suwon.

Flowing on the front-foot, questionable in defence, Brazil swung from taking a 3-0 advantage to being pegged back to 3-2, before added a couple of more goals just beyond the hour. It had been Ronaldo with two goals within the first 13 minutes that had laid the foundation, another brace of goals from inside the six-yard-box. As much value was taken from the fact that he had completed the full 90 minutes.

Switching to Japan, it was to Kobe that Brazil headed for their last-16 clash with Belgium. In a nervy performance, it was Ronaldo who settled the issue with his team’s second goal with only three minutes remaining, converting a Kléberson cross with one sweep of his left foot.

Heavily marked in Shizouka against England in the quarter-finals, Ronaldo had been sacrificed with 20 minutes remaining, in preference for a denser defence as a ten-man Brazil edged into the last-four.

Reunited with Turkey, in Saitama, Ronaldo scored the only goal of the semi-final, when combining his trademark power and pace with an esoteric finish that was jabbed with the outside of his right foot.

On to Yokohama for the final against Germany, four years on from the trauma of Paris, the 2002 final was Ronaldo’s retribution, the scorer of both of Brazil’s World Cup winning goals, firstly taking advantage of double errors by Dietmar Hamann and Oliver Kahn, and then clinically rolling home the second from the edge of the penalty area. Without being a classic final, a certain sense of footballing magnetism had been at play.

Having effectively missed three of the previous four years of his career, the rebirth of Ronaldo at the 2002 World Cup was as beautiful as it was welcome. The leader on the pitch of a reassuring Brazilian success, he would go on to star at one last World Cup four years later, in Germany as he and his teammates made a surprising quarter-final exit to France.

Within this, while 1998 will automatically spring to mind when Ronaldo and the World Cup are mentioned in the same breath, 2002 will always be the tournament that truly belonged to him.

The ultimate Ronaldo Nazario quiz: How much do you know about the Brazilian legend?

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What is Ronaldo’s full name?

Ronaldo de Assis Moreira Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro Robson de Souza