Familiar foes threaten France's ambition

Champions go into opening game as justified favourites but Ronaldo's return could see Brazil emerge as most serious rivals

France, world and European champions and challengers for a place as all-time occupants of the hall of football greatness, and their quick and precocious former colony Senegal promise a thrilling, maybe even a sensational lift-off for the 17th World Cup here today.

Les Bleus have to operate in the absence of the injured Zinedine Zidane – and resist the raging ambitions of the 21-year-old African player of the year and, probably, Liverpool-bound striker El-Hadji Diouf.

Diouf, who owns up to a youth of street thuggery in Senegal where he was brought up by his grandmother in a straw hut, declares: "I have a bad background, everyone was frightened of me in the streets, but tomorrow I have just one thought in my mind. It is for the dignity and the colours of Senegal. We all want to make our mark – and we will beat France."

But if the world is agog at the idea that Senegal could trample over France and into the footsteps of Cameroon, who beat the reigning champions Argentina in the San Siro in the opening game of the 1990 World Cup, it is also politely reminded, by Ronaldo no less, that it should not forget the nation which so long ago marked out its plot on Mount Olympus – and defined the essence of football beauty and success.

Brazil trail at 6-1 on most bookmakers lists behind the 7-2 favourites France, Argentina at 9-2 and the eternally menacing sophisticates of Italy on 5-1. However, the heirs of Pele and Garrincha, Tostao and Gerson say they are happy to lurk in the shadows, that it is a rare advantage, after all, to trade the main seat in the presidential cavalcade for the shady nook of an assassin.

Yesterday Brazil had a spy thrown out of the training camp of Turkey, against whom they open their campaign on Monday night. As a statement of serious intent, though, it paled against the belief of the man who at this time four years ago was proclaimed as potentially one of the greatest footballers the world would ever know.

Ronaldo, who dragged himself out of the Stade de France after a day of spiralling nightmare that ended with the reigning champions being thrashed 3-0 in the 1998 final, quite simply believes he is, truly, back to a place where he can begin to dominate again the world game.

Over a dinner with his close friend and boyhood mentor, the leading Brazilian television journalist Marcos Uchoa, Ronaldo, now 25, proclaimed his full recovery from the physical and psychological ravages that have restricted his appearances to just 22 for his club Internazionale since the day he was rushed to the final against France and went on to the field just an hour after having a full body scan in a Paris hospital.

Ronaldo said: "I don't really want to tell people about this, because it may sound like I'm making big promises and it can be taken the wrong way, but I do believe that this time I will have a great World Cup.

"I'm not worried that I scored just one goal in the friendlies building up to this tournament [he played a full game against Yugoslavia in Rio, and half-match stints against Portugal, a Catalunya Xl in Barcelona and Malaysia]. I felt all my confidence was coming back. It is like the game is easy again.

"I feel as though I've been through my bad years and that maybe God has decided it is time to smile on me again – and Brazil.

"I believe that I am again what I was before. I feel like I did before I had that trouble in Paris. What happened in Paris was terrible. I didn't know what was happening to me when I went through that body scan. It was an unimaginable nightmare. When the doctor said she couldn't find anything wrong with me, I said I must play. At the back of my mind I was wondering what the people of Brazil would think of me if I did not play in the most important game in football and the doctors were saying there was nothing wrong with me."

On the day that shocked a watching world, and turned the roaring favourites into a ghost team, the theories were many and wild.

Some said Ronaldo had suffered an epileptic fit. Others suggested the pressure he had faced on the long build-up to the World Cup had been too much for a 21-year-old and that he had had a nervous breakdown. Four years on, the most common suspicion is that an increasingly high level of painkillers necessary to keep the boy wonder going through a winning semi-final against the Netherlands had finally backfired. It is also believed that Ronaldo's appearance despite the impossible circumstances was not the result of pressure from their mighty sponsor Nike, a strong idea at the time. "It was," said one Brazil insider this week, "just panic. Mario Zagalo, the coach, said: 'Ronaldo is Ronaldo, if he wants to play he plays'. The decision left the captain, Dunga, crazy. No one could concentrate."

Despite an unimpressive qualifying run that left Brazil as perilously placed as 14-1 shots England until the last match, and deep national anguish over the decision of coach Felipe Scolari to leave the still hugely popular veteran Romario at home, there is a growing sense that the genius of Brazilian football might still find a way to put down the upstart French. Ronaldo has triggered hope, in the way that the appearance of David Beckham against Sweden on Sunday, no doubt, will have in England, but there have to be doubts. One Brazilian wanting to believe in Ronaldo put it poignantly: "Look at him, he is like a beautiful thoroughbred. But we still wonder if he is made of glass."

Another worry is Scolari's dubious investment in the machete-style midfield work of his captain Emerson Ferreira – apart from anything else it offers up a possibly ruinous supply of free-kicks to the opposition – but if Ronaldo, who has scored five times in seven appearances for Internazionale, is indeed restored to something like his old glory the fading of his bitter rivalry with Rivaldo may just conjure a rush of the old samba rhythm.

He says: "Four years ago I was really just a kid. It is different now. I have had time to see things more maturely. I know that no longer I have to think of being the next Romario or any other big player. I'm just happy to be Ronaldo and if this time I have a little luck it will be enough."

Enough, he believes, to win Brazil's fifth World Cup and ease the national pain that was recently neatly expressed by Scolari, who said: "My son said to me: 'Daddy, do you know what second place is?' I told him: 'It's the first of the last'."

That is the unbreakable conviction of the greatest football nation on earth and if Ronaldo can indeed re-animate it these next few weeks, France's ascent to the stars could well become much less imperious than is anticipated in the cafes of Paris. With Zidane likely to miss all three group games, and the young tearaway Diouf weaving spells that probably originate with the neighbourhood witch-doctor he regularly consults, the champions of the world, whose veteran defenders Desailly, Thuram, Lizarazu and Leboeuf have all recently shown hints of decay, will face instant pressure tonight.

There are also the prime threats of Italy's tank-trap defence coupled with the flair of Francesco Totti, Juan Sebastian Veron's desperate need to redeem in the shirt of Argentina the misery of his Manchester United season, and the brooding menace of, with due deference to Diouf and his witch-doctor, Africa's most serious contenders, Cameroon. The mix and the intrigue is, as always, glorious.

Though rain began to fall on Seoul last night, the football sun will shine soon enough. The head says that, give or take a little mental fatigue and the recovery of Zidane, it will continue to be draped in the Tricolour. But the heart nags at another option. It has more than a sneaking regard for the yellow of Brazil and the possibility of a resurgent god named Ronaldo.