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Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 51

Publication:
Chicago Tribunei
Location:
Chicago, Illinois
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Page:
51
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

"If Chicago Tribune, Friday, July 10, 1998 Section 4 -7 SOCCER CREW 3, FIRE 0 Ronaldo Lopsided loss ends streak at 11 4 -jsf "JFK 3 By Bob Foltman Tribune Staff Writer COLUMBUS, Ohio Somewhere, Dave Dir must have a knowing smile. The Dallas coach predicted that at some point the Fire would face adversity. Then the league would see what kind of team it has, he said. Adversity now has introduced itself officially to the Fire. It began when starting goalkeeper Zach Thornton suffered a concussion Monday, and it snowballed Thursday night when Peter Nowak and Jerzy Podbrozny were lost with hamstring injuries.

The result was a 3-0 Columbus Crew victory that ended the Fire's winning streak at 11 games. going to be a difficult game." Part of the reason for that is the field at Ohio Stadium. It's far smaller than any other in the league. "The field is harder for obr team because we like to pass the ball around and we were all ner one another," Brown said. The Crew added its second goal in the 40th minute when Rob Smith took a Farrell pass and found room along the left side His shot nicked Coufal but still had enough pace to go into the net.

Arlington Heights native Brian McBride closed out the scoring 2 the 68th minute with a beautiful sidewinding goal from out off a corner kick. The loss was the most one-sided of the season for the Fire (13-6) and the first time it had been shut out since a 1-0 setback to the MetroStars on April 17. Columbus got on the board in the eighth minute when Stern John slotted home his 10th goal of the season. The goal was scored unassisted after Jason Farrell's cross was deflected by both Lubos Kubik and C.J. Brown before settling at the foot of John.

Fire keeper Scott CoufaL playing while Thornton remained in Chicago, didn't have a chance. "The first chance they had ended up in the net," Fire coach Bob Bradley said. "From our end it's been a difficult stretch, and when you play in Columbus you know it's 4iS INSIDE THE FIRE Nowak, Podbrozny try to play with pain Reuters photo Brown gave John a firm shove in the back, knocking him on his face. No fouls were called during the sequence. "It started after he scored his goal," Brown said.

"He felt he was the best player in the league and starting talking to me. I figured he shouldn't be diving if he's going to be talking." Welcome back: Thursday's match was the first home game for Columbus' World Cup players since returning from France. The Crew had four players on the U.S. team: Thomas Dooley, Brian McBride, Brian Maisonnueve aqd Juergen Sommer. Glad he was home: The Fire had to scramble to find a backup for Coufal for Thursday night.

Its: original plan was to have former Moroccan national team keeper Khalil Azmi back up Coufal, bttt Azmi had some conflicts with hs Hershey team. So the Fire called former Crew keeper David Win-; ner, who still lives in Columbus after being waived by the and Winner was on the bench mj case Coufal was injured. Continued from Page 1 have played two matches fewer than Ronaldo because their teams were eliminated. He has not scored the video highlight goal of the tournament; England's 18-year-old, Michael Owen, did that against Argentina in the second round. Ronaldo was a 17-year-old who never left the bench for the Brazilian team that won the 1994 World Cup.

His only mythic proportions in this tournament have been those manufactured in the four years since by the same shoe company Jordan made famous. "I would rather be with the world champions than the top goal-scorer of the tournament" Ronaldo said after failing to score in the opening match. Unless he has saved the spectacular for the biggest match, Ronaldo will not be the Maradona of 1986, the Paolo Rossi of 1982, the Beckenbauer of 1974, the Pele of 1958 the players who came to represent a World Cup. He will have been a very good player on a very good team, one playing in a record sixth final and trying for a record fifth title. "When the team helps me, I can help the team," Ronaldo said after scoring twice in the 4-0 victory over Chile in the second round.

He has helped by drawing attention, by forcing two or three defenders into coverage every time he gets the ball with the slightest bit of room to maneuver. Ronaldo's actions have suggested the team has not reciprocated. "Ronaldo doesn't make Brazil," said assistant coach Zico. "But his presence alone opens spaces for others." Often, Ronaldo vainly has tried to dribble through defenses converging on him. Frustrated at not getting enough passes, he has confused his teammates by dropping back to pick up the ball himself near mid-field.

In the process, he has discovered a different way to have a major impact on a match. Ronaldo's passes have been converted into goals three times, two in the 3-2 quarterfinal victory over Denmark. "Ronaldo should be happy that he created two chances," said Brazil midfielder Rivaldo. "His pass to me was brilliant because I had plenty of time to control it before shooting." For Ronaldo, voted world player of the year the last two seasons, happiness has been measured most frequently by goals scored. He averaged a goal per match during two seasons in the Netherlands with PSV Eindhoven and one season in Spain with FC Barcelona.

He scored 25 goals in 32 league matches for Inter Milan this season. He has scored 30 times in 41 piatches for the national team. "He is the best player in the world," England coach Glenn Hoddle said early in the tournament Inter paid $28 million to buy him from Barcelona the 1996-97 season. He earns $5 million a year in salary, nearly $2 million a year from Nike and, as what one paper called it "pocket money" of $500,000 a year in a deal with a Brazilian brewery. To Italy's best-selling weekly magazine, the Christian Family, the young man born Ronaldo Luis de Lima in a low-income Rio de Janeiro suburb became a "symbol of a typically Italian way of confronting problems by ignoring them to follow the skills of a 20-year-old who promises goals galore." Imagine what the magazine might think of Kevin Garnett To those who pay him, Ronaldo is more a symbol of how effectively a sports hero can be sold.

Inter's season ticket sales increased from 30,000 to 50,000 after it signed him, and the team grossed $2 million by selling 40,000 jerseys with his picture in a few weeks last summer. Inter expects to earn back in fewer than five years its nine-year Ronaldo investment of $100 million, which includes marketing costs. Nike's marketing power, so evident in making Jordan one of the best-known faces on the planet, has had the same effect with Ronaldo. His shaved head and Bugs Bunny smile are plastered everywhere from Brazil to Bangladesh. "I'm still young," Ronaldo said after getting his second player-of-the-year award, "and I have some time left for more rewards and records." At 5 feet 10 inches and 182 pounds, Ronaldo has been described as having the body of a welterweight boxer and the feet of Fred Astaire.

The problem is, a soccer player is neither fighting a single opponent nor MAJOR GOLF STORE tfi SBXUKTO OCT ISOW Ronaldo rejoices after his goal at the start of the second half gave Brazil a 1-0 lead over the Netherlands. calling his tune. A star quarterback or running back is guaranteed of having a large number of individual opportunities in a game. A pitcher has the ball all the time, a slugger gets an average of four chances for home runs per game. Jordan takes 20 or more shots in most games.

A top forward in soccer must wait for the game to come to him. Ronaldo has taken just 19 shots in six matches, and few were from a distance or position to expect they would produce a goal. Given the defensive nature of modern soccer, his having figured in seven of the 13 goals scored by Brazil their 14th was an own goal off a Scottish player might be a better measure of his production than his individual total of four. "I really wanted to score," Ronaldo said after the Chile irtatch. "These goals tasted sweet but they just whetted my appetite for more.

If those two shots had not ricocheted off the posts, I would have been among the top scorers of the World Cup." Teammate" Roberto Carlos called Ronaldo's four matches without a goal, three of which came before the World Cup, "the spell that was hanging over him." Ronaldo now is among the top scorers. At least that much was expected from a man portrayed in a tire company commercial as a modern version of the Christ statue that is a Rio landmark. Such hopes often are dashed in a World Cup by the vicious tackling of opposing defenders, but that has not happened to Ronaldo, perhaps because he has not handled the ball as much as expected. He has been fouled 19 times in six matches, fewer fouls per match than 10 other players. Tendinitis in his left knee also has been cited as a reason for his failure to dominate matches.

That issue heated up when he did not practice three days before the Denmark match. "There has been a lot of unnecessary song and dance about that" Ronaldo said. Some now are saying the same about Ronaldoma-nia, which has produced comparisons to Pele, nicknames like "the Phenomenon" and "Extraterrestrial" and a young man protected everywhere by bodyguards. Former French star Michel Platim, now president of the World Cup organizing committee, offered only "He moves very fast" when asked for an assessment of Ronaldo. At 18, Ronaldo was the leading scorer in the Dutch league.

At 21, he is in a difficult race with the image of greatness that preceded him. By Bob Foltman Tribune Staff Writer COLUMBUS, Ohio -Fire coach Bob Bradley may not know for a couple of days the extent of the hamstring injuries to Peter Nowak and Jerzy Podbrozny. Podbrozny pulled up in the 21st minute of Thursday night's 3-0 loss to the Crew after attempting a shot. He immediately grabbed the back of his right leg and went off the field. He received treatment and tried to play through it, but had to come off for Frank Klo-pas in the 23rd minute.

Nowak played the entire first half with a bad left hamstring but sat out the second half. "Peter had trouble warming up," Bradley said. "His hamstring was very tight. He thought it would loosen up." Both players are questionable for Wednesday's exhibition match against Mexican club Pumas. Bradley may elect to sit both until the D.C.

United game July 18 in Washington. Under the gun: Keeper Scott Coufal made his first start of the season and was under pressure almost immediately. For the night, Coufal made two saves while allowing three goals and seeing his career record fall to 0-5. "I take responsibility for all the goals," he said afterward. "The first one we failed to clear, but the second one I feel I should have had.

It nicked off my leg." Battle within the wan In the final minute of the first half, Fire defender C.J. Brown and Crew forward Stern John went after one another almost oblivious to what was going on around them. Brown believed John took a dive in the 44th minute and started yelling at him. As the ball went downfield and came back to Brown, John challenged him hard and upended him. Seconds later, TUFF ese uniquely designed woods ore ttil- LI pkeroeni mm the flrwns ComffardSlS9 GRAPHITEW Complete Sets (J A Name Brand -il gPmgfa.

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High up in the far corner is Cardinal Richelieu, one of history's hard cases, the man who invented the French language when not doing in Huguenots. One has to wonder what he might have thought of so much ecumenism below, not to mention a soccer team and a city melted together as if it were from, well, America. The present premier, Lionel Jospin, issued a statement admiring the team as a represen-tative of French diversity, maybe the first time those words were ever put together by a Frenchman needing votes. "When I see blacks and immigrants with the French flag singing 'La Jospin said, "I find these timely images." It was Charles de Gaulle who lamented how difficult it was to unify a nation "that has 265 kinds of cheese." Soccer seems to have done just that, at least for an evening, and my nose can confirm de Gaulle was right about the cheese. Behind the huge television screen are the gothic towers and gruesome black spire of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, just across the Seine and the Pont L'Arcole.

At times it appears that Zinedine Zidane is kicking a soccer ball to about the point where Esmerelda was hauled by who, if memory serves, perished from an own goal. Down the Rue de Rivoli is the Louvre and its treasures, up the Montmarte hill is the Sacre Coeur and six stops away on the Metro is the Hard Rock Cafe. You know, the important tourist stops. For three hours of this evening, they are empty because, without knowing exactly how or why, the French soccer team is making the country of France feel even better than it usually does about being French. It does not take much to poke the national conceit, this illustrated no better than that day's newspaper France Soir reacting to the news that an American might buy controlling interest in the property management company that oversees the Eiffel Tower.

A cartoon depicts the tower with two Texas oilmen watching dollars squirt out the top. I have the caption translated. "We will not have the symbol of France run by gum-chewers," it says. At this moment the symbol of France is a black man, Lilian Thuram, who has just scored his second goal of the night, a crisp whack with his left foot that puts the ball in the back of Croatia's net. It will be the blow that eliminates Croatia and send the French into the World Cup final against Brazil.

Thuram is hugging and dancing and laughing up on the big screen just as are the Parisians in the square. Several young men climb the baroque street lamps and wave the tricolor as if shaking crumbs from a tablecloth. This continues for the remaining 20 minutes of the game and well after. Finally breaking through the edge of the crowd, I get to the street back to my hotel and I am suddenly and happily hugged by a crocked Frenchman. I give him the thumbs-up and offer him a stick of gum.

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