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The return home of Robson de Souza, universally known as Robinho, and Roberto Carlos does not signify the end of an exodus of so many Brazilians — almost 900 every year — who fly away to make their fortunes in Europe, yet these are significant homecomings. Brazilian fans deserve to see their fine performers in the flesh, however fleeting these rare returns may be.

Robinho fled England’s harsh winter, and harsher tackles — if only until the World Cup in June — and scored a spectacular back-heel goal in his debut with Santos on Sunday.

Carlos, back on home soil after a glorious decade with Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Fenerbache in Istanbul, acknowledged he was caught off guard by the speed of Brazilian football. He was sent off in his first match for Corinthians but was inspirational in his second game, on Saturday.

“I still have to adjust to this new type of football,” he said.

“But I can improve game by game. Brazil’s league is one of the quickest in the world.”

Quicker than Europe?

There are different types of quickness, different emphases on how to use the sharpness of a player’s feet and his mind. And this debate is nowhere as hot as in England.

Robinho’s “failure” to convince successive coaches that he was worth a starting place was what drove him out of Manchester City. He cost the club a $52 million transfer fee; he drew wages of $250,000 per game; but some saw him as too exotic, too brittle, for the relentlessly combative English league.

It is an old story with a new name. Englishness is an outmoded concept of what works in global football, and gone are the days when Charles Hughes, the director of coaching at the English Football Association, could trot around the world telling everyone that their style of playing was wrong if it contrasted with the aerial bombardment he espoused.

Borrowed from a former Air Force wing commander’s theory that the best route to goal was through “the position of maximum opportunity,” Hughes claimed Brazil in particular had the wrong method. All those short passes, those indulgent dribbles, those loving caresses of the ball were wasteful, he implied.

Long retired, and not much missed, Hughes never realized how simple arithmetic disproved his theory. England won the World Cup once, on home turf in 1966. Brazil has won it five times, always abroad and often in such memorable style that all the world applauds it.

Robinho is a throwback to Brazilian wing play. Older readers might remember Garrincha, the Little Bird who twice won the World Cup, in 1958 and 1962, though sadly drink and depression got the better of him.

Successive generations have seen Brazilians in every climate, from Scandinavia to Siberia, and culture, from Japan to Jerusalem. But still Britain, whose sailors introduced the ball to Brazil, harbors doubts.

Robinho didn’t succeed in England. There he is seen as a bird who might soar in the early season when the sun shines, but whose team managers at Manchester City used him part time.

Mark Hughes, his first manager, was Welsh. Roberto Mancini, who replaced Hughes, is Italian. Their solution was to select Robinho for matches in Manchester but to leave him on the bench for away games.

It boils down to the belief that you attack at home, you defend away, and that defense must come from every member of the team, creative or not.

Robinho first encountered this philosophy not in England, but in Madrid, under the coaching of Fabio Capello, the current England national team manager. Capello could appreciate skill but wanted to see it laced with hard work. He left out Robinho, though ultimately he won his place back in time to help Real Madrid win La Liga.

Though Robinho began brilliantly at Manchester, he never quite convinced the coaches, who live by results, to rely on him.

That is intriguing because English football is now far from native.

Two-thirds of the 300-plus players in its Premier League are foreign. It is a melting pot of nationalities.

Yet the legacy of mistrust that started when Mirandinha arrived at Newcastle prevails. Mirandinha loved to score but didn’t much love the frosts or the fouls. However, not far from Newcastle, an even smaller, slighter Brazilian, the 1.65-meter-gall Juninho is among the best-loved players ever to wear the shirt of Middlesbrough. The fans saw his leg broken, and his great courage to win a place back through sheer love of playing.

When the World Cup is done, Robinho will have to make a permanent choice. To return to Manchester, which still owns his registration, or somehow find a financier who can keep him happy at home.

Commentary

The New York Times