“I cry for the world to hear—Gooooooooool! Who’s Barcelona? Who’s Ronaldinho? Who’s the best in the world? Whose tradition? You are no giant! The giant is from Porto Alegre!
Barcelona knows better than to take the FIFA Club World Cup for granted.
Nine years ago, at the same stadium where Sunday’s final will be played, the Catalans huffed and puffed and were eventually dissected by an Internacional side that produced Adriano Gabiru’s legendary goal—and Daniel de Oliveira’s famous description for the audience back home.
FIFA Club World Cup on Sportsnet: Watch FC Barcelona vs. River Plate in the FIFA Club World Cup final from Yokohama, Japan live on Sportsnet World on Sunday. Coverage starts at 5:30 am ET. || Broadcast schedule
It was a triumph by the Brazilian team that tightened South America’s grip on club football’s international championship.
Sao Paulo had beaten Liverpool the year before, joining Corinthians as the tournament’s only other winner. Two years prior the plug had been pulled on the Intercontinental Cup—the forerunner to the current FIFA Club World Cup—after more than four decades, with the CONMEBOL region edging UEFA 22-21 on the all-time ledger.
No doubt River Plate would love nothing more than to reinstate South American supremacy at international level, which is now contained in the FIFA Club World Cup. Seven of the previous eight winners hail from Europe—the lone exception being the 2012 Corinthians team that toppled Chelsea.
River, having beaten Tigres in the final of the Copa Libertadores and J. League champions Sanfrecce Hiroshima in Wednesday’s FIFA Club World Cup semifinal, will face Barcelona in Sunday’s Yokohama showdown. With them in Japan are throngs of fanatical supporters from Buenos Aires and the anxieties of an entire continent.
This competition may be global in scope, but it remains very much a gauge by which South American football measures itself—the reflector in which it sees itself, values itself.
For CONMEBOL (and this is especially true of the pre-Joao Havelange era) the relationship with UEFA has typically been one of imbalance—where the Europeans patronize the South Americans who, in turn, despise the Europeans.
There is political history wrapped up in these sentiments; there is the memory of disproportionate World Cup representation; there is the economic reality that sees one continent’s best players bought like cheap commodities by another.
The latter factor has already seen 22-year-old River midfielder Matias Kranevitter join Atletico Madrid for €8 million, although the fully-minted Argentina international will only join the Spanish side next month. His final match for River will be Sunday against Barcelona.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when the Copa Libertadores winners could field a side with as many star players as their European opponents—as the late Bob Paisley would attest. In December of 1981 a Zico-inspired Flamengo outfit ran circles around Liverpool, who had lifted a third European Cup in five seasons the previous spring.
“We were beaten by a better side with superior technique,” remarked Paisley, the Reds manager. “I wanted to see how [Zico] would react to a physical challenge but I couldn’t get close enough to him to find out,” added midfielder Graeme Souness.
The annals of the Intercontinental Cup are bursting with stories like this.
In 1962, after a Eusebio brace had helped Benfica to a European Cup triumph over Ferenc Puscas (who scored a hat-trick in the final) and Real Madrid, Pele’s five goals over two legs lifted Santos over the Portuguese giants, who repeated as champions the following year at the expense of Gianni Rivera and AC Milan.
Six years later Carlos “El Narigon (Big Nose)” Bilardo orchestrated Estudiantes’ defeat of George Best and Manchester United. In 1992 Rai’s two goals overturned Barcelona’s early lead, courtesy Hristo Stoichkov, and took Sao Paulo to international club football’s summit.
Rai was purchased by Paris Saint-Germain in 1993, and while Sao Paulo successfully defended the Intercontinental Cup the tide had started to turn. South American clubs would only win three of the next 11 finals against European opposition, and despite that early success in the FIF Club World Cup they’ve largely been second-best throughout the Champions League era.
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Such are the conditions, the realities, River Plate will be up against on Sunday, when they emerge from the tunnel alongside the likes of Luis Suarez, Neymar, Andres Iniesta and, should he recover from a stomach virus, Lionel Messi.
Kranevitter, who will be joined in midfield by the veteran Leonardo Ponzio, will look to shield the his defence as best he can, perhaps even springing a Lucas Alario or Rodrigo Mora on the break—a la Adriano Gabiru in 2006.
Still, a River win is unlikely, and if it happens it’ll be down to a meticulously organized defensive effort, such as Corinthians put forward three years ago.
These days South American victories at the Club World Cup are rare phenomena, one-offs. But they happen, and often in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Just ask Barcelona.
Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter