Maybe it will. But it might not be the Italians doing it.
The eye-catching performances in AC Milan’s 2-1 victory in Siena on Saturday night were Alexandre Pato and Ronaldinho in the attack and Alessandro Nesta and Thiago Silva in defense. Three of the four are Brazilians who are hoping the Italian league makes their national coach, Carlos Dunga, sit up and notice them.
The other, certainly, is pure Italian, Roman in fact. But Nesta, classy defender though he could once claim to be, is 33 and coming back gingerly from a back injury that many feared might finish his career.
In the hot and humid late summer Tuscan night, the dovetailing of Nesta and Thiago was exactly what Milan needed after the retirement of the club captain, Paolo Maldini.
“Thiago helps him, Nesta guides him,” Leonardo, the new Milan coach, said on television after the game. “They complete each other.
“Sandro had the possibility of not playing anymore. This gave him an incredible motivation to return the same player as before.”
Thiago, almost a decade younger, tall and strong but also quick because he started his career as a winger with Fluminense, is, of course, a Brazilian, like his new coach.
Before Saturday, Leonardo had never coached in competitive sports. Now he is entrusted by Silvio Berlusconi, Milan’s president and Italy’s prime minister, to take care of his team. A player at the highest level, a World Cup winner with Brazil, but, before this summer, more of an aide, a talent scout to the president, Leonardo has replaced Carlo Ancelotti who had five years as a Milan player and eight as its coach.
The first player Ancelotti tried to take with him when he decamped to Chelsea in June was Milan’s “baby,” another Brazilian, Pato. Ancelotti had called Pato a phenomenon of youth — swift, with a powerful shot, superb balance and, something that nobody can coach, that extra sense of where the goals are.
Berlusconi said yes to selling Kaká, his Brazilian playmaker, to Real Madrid soon after Ancelotti left. He said no, at any price, to letting Pato go.
Those who have followed this remarkable youngster can sense why. But he looks a youth no longer. His birth certificate says he was born in Pato Branco, in the south of Brazil, 19 years ago, but the growth of beard, the possibly still-growing stature, the sometimes almost calloused expression, makes him a man before his time.
Pato, whose real name is Alexandre Rodrigues da Silva, slipped back to Brazil to marry the actress Sthefany Brito last month. Their honeymoon was short; Milan, like many a top European club, had scheduled a summer tour to make dollars in the United States.
It had lost eight out of 10 matches leading up to the Serie A start on Saturday. Leonardo claimed he was little troubled by that because he had seen the form and the pride being primed by his players for the real thing.
“I’m in the role now of thinking about others’ emotions, not mine,” said the coach. “My rapport with Berlusconi is very good. Berlusconi is in love with Ronaldinho. He thinks he has a pearl at home that needs to be used at its best.
“I have known Ronaldinho forever. I know his story, I played for years with his brother, I’m Brazilian. With Ronaldinho, it’s now or never with Milan and with the national team. Pato is an incredible talent who must affirm himself in the national team. I think they and Thiago will soon return to Brazil’s lineup.”
They are not on the squad named for the Sept. 5 crunch qualifying match in Rosario, Argentina. But five Serie A players are on the squad, as are Kaká and Adriano, who recently left AC Milan and Inter. As Lippi wished, the Italian league is being noticed, if only as a major part of a Brazilian renaissance.
What illuminated the tough opening fixture in Siena on Saturday was hugely Brazilian. Ronaldinho, pulling the strings of imagination behind the running of Pato and Marco Borriello, has some way to go to recapture the magical Ronaldinho of three or four seasons ago with Barcelona.
But little by little, the passes of Ronaldinho, the timing, the spontaneity split Siena’s rugged, he-man back line. There were men there who tried to kick Pato from the thighs down, but Ronaldinho knew where to put the ball, in places where those pack dogs would not snap at the younger Brazilian.
Each goal that Pato scored and at least four other chances emanated from Ronaldinho’s exact passes and Pato’s intuitive running. Add to that Borriello’s willingness to be the selfless foil and the pace of Marek Jankulovski down the left, and the two goals might well have been five.
Milan, despite six players missing through injury and its new striker, Klass-Jan Huntelaar, suspended, did just enough to win. Siena leveled after Pato’s first goal, but never looked likely to do so twice.
Pato turns 20 next month. He was sadly, almost comically, pursued by a pack of Siena players angry with him for teasing and wasting time at the end — but Pato has been upsetting older players since he was 3.
That is when he was spotted, and he then played futsal, indoor soccer. By 11 he had moved in with 83 boys and youths in the training academy of Internacional in Porto Alegre. After 10 games for that club, Pato, then 17, was sold to Milan.
Italy has been preparing him for Brazil ever since.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/sports/soccer/24iht-SOCCER.html
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