Brazilians take different paths to top of soccer world

Marta, Kaka regularly show why they are best players in world

You may not recognize the name Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, even though he is officially the best soccer player on the planet. The same may be true of Marta Viera da Silva, although her name does include a giveaway.

On Dec. 17, the world's leading soccer organization, FIFA, brought these two Brazilians to the Zurich Opera House so they could sing their praises as the best male and female players on the planet.

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It is very difficult to argue with the results of this competition, which relies on votes from the coaches and captains of 165 nations whose choices were so overwhelming. The male champion collected more than double the vote of second-place Lionel Messi and the best female was close to twice as popular as German Birgit Prinz.

Allow me let you in on a few secrets about Kaka and Marta. Ladies first.

Anyone who saw the two goals Marta scored to help crush the United States in last year's World Cup semi-finals will understand why she is considered the best player in the women's game. For the first goal she beat six -- yes, six -- players before scoring low and hard. For the second, she picked up the ball wide left, cut inside, beat a defender by back-heeling the ball to the right, raced round the player to pick up her own pass, beat another transfixed defender, took two strides and crashed the ball into the corner of the net. Unstoppable, both times.

Dazzling onlookers, terrifying opponents and winning difficult battles is what Marta has been doing ever since she decided she wanted to be a professional player in a country that barely recognized female players. She was seven.

Brazilian women were banned from playing the game by law until 1979 and the game was barely open to them 14 years later when Marta was fighting to play with boys.

Typical of so many rags-to-riches soccer stories that come out of Brazil, Marta came from an impoverished family. Her father, a barber, abandoned the family when Marta was young, so the fruitless effort to stop her playing with boys was left to her brother.

But her passion for the game was beginning to show. Simply put, she was better than the boys and would not be denied.

She was the best when she played on the streets with rolled-up plastic bags for a ball. She was the best when she played on a boy's indoor team. That's why one opponent refused to play against a girl and she was asked to leave.

From there, she played with a girl's team until it was disbanded and any soccer future looked bleak for this 14-year-old. It was then that a local soccer organizer persuaded her to take a three-day bus trip to Rio de Janeiro to try out for a team there. A tough decision for a backwoods girl. She came, they saw and she conquered.

Three years later, she was picked for the 2003 World Cup. Brazil did not shine that time. But Marta did.

Among those startled at her skills, her strength and her speed was Roland Arnquist, coach of Umea IK, a Swedish women's pro team. Marta was about to earn her first soccer paycheque.

Even that was a tough transition.

She had never seen snow before and Umea is just 240 kilometres from the Arctic Circle. She had never trained seriously, but now it was 10 practices a week. She had never seen the inside of a gym but when she was asked for 10 pushups she did double, when official practice stopped, she continued. And she couldn't understand a word of Swedish.

Today she is Umea IK's star, one of those very few players, man or woman, who has fans on the edge of their seats whenever they get the ball. When Marta has it, something is about to set us gasping.

Last summer came the ultimate Brazilian accolade. Marta became the first woman to imprint her foot in wet concrete on the Soccer Walk of Fame at Maracana Stadium, the Mecca of Brazilian soccer.

Here is a young man who had all the advantages of a comfortable middle-class Brazilian life. No poverty struggles for this young man. However, there was little to suggest he would be the world's best player, despite his remarkable skill levels. There are hatfuls of exquisitely skilful Brazilian soccer stars.

Kaka was a scrawny kid - thin as a rake you might say. So much so he needed hormone treatments to help his growth. He was unsure whether or not he wanted to make soccer his career until he was 15. Three years later he fractured a vertebra in his spine in a pool accident. He was lucky to recover.

His career was now travelling at great speed. In 2001, he was playing for Sao Paulo youth team. A year later he was with the seniors and in the same year he won a spot on the Brazilian squad.

Then it was off to Milan with his family in tow. He has already won a Serie A title and a Champions League medal.

So here they are, two Brazilians with totally different backgrounds

capable of electrifying fans with their twists and turns, there extraordinary talent. They make the game worth watching.

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