THERE IS NO BRAZIL:

Brazilian football has moved from poetry into prose (Simon Kuper, June 19 2010, Financial Times)

Jogo bonito with its dribbles, tricks and goals was the product of a particular era. It’s now gone forever. To expect its return is like waiting for the revival of Byzantine art.

Jogo bonito climaxed in 1970 when Brazil won its third World Cup. Brazilians have been trying to catch up with tactically more advanced western Europe ever since. Often they have achieved dourness. At their best, in the World Cup of 2002, they have found synthesis: European grit with moments of Brazilian beauty. In 2006 they attempted a bit more jogo bonito. They fielded five great dribblers, not all of them slender workaholics, and lost in the quarter-final. That buried jogo bonito.

It lives on only in people’s heads. At kick-off on Tuesday, flashlights popped around the stands: Brazil have become an experience, a tribute act, as much as a football team. What spoiled the experience was the match. Only Robinho, whose muttonchop beard evoked Abraham Lincoln, had licence to dribble. His job was to play jogo bonito. His teammates’ job was to back him with dour western European football, which is the new international style. Even the North Koreans and New Zealanders have learnt it. They have gone from incompetence to hyperorganisation. Brazil have gone from brilliance to hyperorganisation.

Blaming Dunga for this is silly. Eleven-man jogo bonito is simply no longer feasible. You could dribble in the 1960s, when the average player ran perhaps 4km a game. If you beat a defender then you were usually free, because his colleagues hadn’t come across to back him up. If he dispossessed you it didn’t matter much, as his team then took forever to move the ball forward. You could assemble your defence at leisure.

Here in South Africa, players run perhaps 10km a game. A beaten defender will tackle you again a second later, and he probably has two teammates covering him. Even the Brazilians of 1970 would struggle to dribble against today’s North Korea. Defenders here have memorised opponents’ tricks from DVDs. And teams now break instantly on winning the ball.