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CommentaryItaly

Ronaldinho & A Seleção

November 16, 2010 — by Sean1

In preparation for tomorrow’s Brazil-Argentina “friendly”, we in the CultFootball pressroom have been having some exchanges as to whether or not Ronaldinho’s form warranted his call up to the side, especially after having been so unceremoniously dumped for the summer’s big tourney in S. Africa. Mark Gannon, our man in Brazil, lays it out plainly below.

The best player in the world: ~2003-2007

I watched the season of The Simpsons after Conan O’Brien left to take over Late Night, but I didn’t like it, so I stopped watching the show. The next year, friends started telling me about episodes that actually sounded good. It seemed like the show might actually be back on track, so I thought I might try to watch it again. I’d still forget to tune in most of the time, and on the occasions when I did, it sucked. But frequently, when I didn’t watch, my friends would tell me about the episodes, and they sounded really good.

I mention this because I’ve been thinking about it since getting Sean’s e-mail, and it occurred to me that I’ve never actually watched a Milan game in which Ronaldinho played well. I’ve seen Milan games without him, Milan games in which he didn’t play well, and highlights of Milan games in which he did play at least well enough to make the highlights. But I don’t think Ronaldinho has ever had a good game for Milan when I sat down and watched the whole game.

I think Ronaldinho probably should have been on the Seleção for the 2010 World Cup, but I don’t expect him to be a starter in 2014 at age 34.

He is already a very different player from the one he was when he shone at Barça, and a good part of the difference looks to me like bad aging. That said, his peak was so high that he can still be a very useful player.