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Rivaldo plays Van Cleef but not for Van Gaal

John Carlin
Sunday 28 July 2002 00:00 BST
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Some football managers become so fixated with tactics that they lose sight of the fact that the game's principal objective is to score goals. They scrutinise video after video, they pore over charts, analyse statistics, devise formations based on every mathematical variant on the number 11 and become so blinded by science that they fail to see that one great player – a great player who scores and makes goals – trumps all.

Such a coach, it would appear, is the Dutchman Louis van Gaal, whose first significant move on rejoining Barcelona this summer has been to get rid of the forward who has scored the most and the best goals for the club over the past five years (116 in 209 Spanish league and Champions' League games), and who has been consistently ranked during this period among the top three footballers on the planet.

It would be different if Rivaldo, who recently turned 30, were showing signs of decay. But he demonstrated once more in the World Cup, a tournament in which he scored five goals and set up four, that he possesses the most lethal left foot in the game.

Yet a week ago exactly Barcelona announced that they no longer required his services. Milan are expected to sign him any day now. Milan or Real Madrid or any number of top clubs. Bobby Robson, who coached him at Barcelona, would kill to have him at Newcastle. Luis Figo, who played with him for three years at Barça, said he would love to see Rivaldo join him at Real Madrid. "What club would not want to have Rivaldo?" Figo asked.

Carlo Ancelotti, the Milan coach, spoke for just about every football person alive when he said, on learning Barça had rescinded Rivaldo's contract: "It's always better to have him on your side than against you."

As for his now ex-team-mates, they were, in the words of Patrick Kluivert, "stupefied". "The image of the club has been weakened and our forward line will be much less dangerous without him," said the Dutch striker, in Rivaldo's absence the classiest player in the Barcelona team but one who knows very well he lacks the Brazilian's venom in front of goal.

So what's going on? Rivaldo summed it up: "I don't like Van Gaal and I am sure he doesn't like me." But it was, as Rivaldo made clear, Van Gaal's decision. For even when he learnt that the Dutchman, who was reinstated in May having been run out of town two years ago, was back in charge, Rivaldo issued a statement from the Brazilian training camp saying that he wanted to see out the year remaining on his contract with Barcelona; that he was so keen to stay he would play in goal, if need be.

The ball was in the Dutchman's court and the Dutchman – a team man who in private expresses his dislike of "star" players – opted to smash it out of the Nou Camp. Van Gaal's explanation last week was that he preferred the Rivaldo he knew before he won the World Player of the Year award in 1999. From then on, according to Van Gaal, Rivaldo had not shown the same commitment.

"He delivered less for Barça than for Brazil," Van Gaal said last week. "When I saw Rivaldo with Brazil I saw a player full of enthusiasm, eager to work hard for the team."

What Van Gaal perhaps does not know is that Brazil fans have been saying the precise opposite about Rivaldo for years. "Why doesn't he score those great goals for us the way he does for Barcelona?" was the eternal lament of the Brazilians.

Well, he has shown them now. The way that, time after time since he joined the club in 1997, he has shown the Barça fans. The strange thing about Rivaldo, unique among players of his rare quality, is the mixed feelings he elicits among supporters. It's because he does not always give the impression of being willing to die for the team colours in the manner, say, of Luis Enrique, Barça's Roy Keane. Loyal above all to himself, Rivaldo is a hit-man, a narrow-eyed bounty-hunter. In those old Clint Eastwood westerns he would play the part of Lee Van Cleef.

The fans, especially at a club as neurotic as Barcelona, may never warm to a player of that sort. But the managers ought to, and the players most certainly do. They know the value of having Lee Van Cleef on your side; they know the prizes he delivers, the financial rewards he brings in. And the best of them know also that to play in the same team as a truly great player is a privilege that no money can buy.

Luis Enrique, when he was asked last week what he thought of the Brazilian's departure, replied, with great feeling and solemnity: "When I am old I will tell my grandchildren that I played alongside Rivaldo."

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