Anilava Chatterjee, St. Petersburg: At the end of the match between Brazil and Costa Rica I saw a well known face at the back gate of the media centre. The reporter of the Globo TV told me,” Hey look at there, he is coming whom you wanted to see.” I saw a fat man wearing a blue shirt with a back pack leaving the stadium. The best No.9 of the World Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima. He gave a World Cup trophy to Brazil, not only that he also took his side to the final of the tournament in 1998 but failed to play the final due to sickness. He played three World Cups where he won a golden ball and a golden boot. You can’t recognize the old and new Ronaldo right now. The complexion of the legendary footballer has totally changed. No one can imagine that he is the player who has been regarded as the fastest dribbler in the World. He is doing commentary for Brazilian channel Globo. After the commentary he was leaving the stadium after his commentary. The reporters of Globo saying that Ronaldo is happy with the performance of the Selecao. The Brazilians fans are happy as well.
At last Brazil won the game. The supporters started their celebration in the gallery. They were very tensed ahead of the game. I heard the Brazilian choras in the metro and outside the stadium but there was still some tension going on among the supporters. After the shocking result of Argentina there was a tension that same thing can happen to Brazil and they might get out of the tournament from the primary stage. In between that the Brazilian fans were seen mocking Messi with the slogan ‘Chao Chao Messi’, which means bye bye Messi.
But like the earlier matches the courage among the fans were missing. The stadium just looks as good as the St. Petersburg city. Beside that one can see Neva river. After reaching the stadium I saw the Brazilian supporters entering the stadium quietly. I could imagine their tension after watching a tweet posted by legendary Brazilian footballer Pele.
It’s game day for ?? ! We will have to be at our best to score past a goalkeeper like Keylor Navas. But I feel good about it. // Hoje é dia de jogo da Seleção! Nós precisamos estar no auge para marcar contra um goleiro como Keylor Navas. Mas eu estou com um bom pressentimento. pic.twitter.com/SdFGbcjtEi
— Pelé (@Pele) June 22, 2018
And what was going on in the mind of the footballers can be imagined seeing that Neymar was crying on his feet. After scoring in this game Neymar has surpassed Romario. Only Ronaldo and Pele are in front of him. But no one could have remembered these stats if Coutinho didn’t break the deadlock in the injury time. Everybody would forget that Brazil had 67% position. But the fans started their celebration in the stands after the win. The Selecao’s are a team which have supporters across the globe only because of their way of playing football beautifully.
Everyone was saying that Neymar has brought ‘Jogo Bonito’ in the field. At the post-match press conference coach Tite was saying,” We didn’t play well in the first half but can you say what more could we do in the second half. In a tournament like World Cup you don’t get a second chance to comeback. You know what happened in the match of Argentina and in the matches of the other favourites. Else they have lost the match or they drew. Now we have to keep this winning run in the match against Serbia.” Coutinho too came at the press-conference. He said professor told us to keep ourselves mentally strong till the end of the game. The Brazilian football fraternity calls Tite as professor. The nation is currently relying on their professor. In the home season he gave a lot of proud moments to Corinthians. But what will happen in the World Cup? According to him here the ‘Margin of error’ is pretty small. Thanks to god that the dream spell of six minutes happened and Brazil won the game 2-0 otherwise we could see the poster of ‘Chao Chao Brazil’ on the banks of Neva River.
