Even after all these years, the argument still rages. Did he mean it? Was it a fluke? Could Ronaldinho possibly have spotted David Seaman off his line and volleyed the ball over his head and into the top corner from 40 yards out on purpose?
It was the goal that broke England’s hearts when Brazil knocked Sven-Göran Eriksson’s side out of the World Cup quarter-finals in 2002, and a goal every fan remembers where they were when they saw it float over Seaman.
More than two decades later, when these two countries meet again at Wembley on Saturday, the issue remains contentious.
“There’s no way he meant it,” Danny Mills, England’s right-back that day, told Mail Sport. “As much as he can say he did. I know he’s done some spectacular things in his career, but the way he runs up to it is not the body position of someone who wants to do it.
‘I used to share a room with Nigel Martyn and he would spend hours analyzing David Beckham’s free kicks. He watched his hand positions, his body positions and picked out all the little cues. Looking at Ronaldinho’s body shape, he didn’t mean it.’
England’s clash with Brazil on Saturday brings back memories of Ronaldinho’s lob that broke the Three Lions’ hearts in the quarter-finals at the 2002 World Cup
Emile Heskey and Danny Mills played in the match and debated whether Ronaldinho meant it
England took the lead through Michael Owen before Rivaldo and Ronaldinho won it for Brazil
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‘I think he meant it,’ disputes Emile Heskey, who set up Michael Owen for England’s opening goal at the Shizuoka Stadium in Japan 22 years ago. ‘…but I don’t actually think it was intended for that corner. I think it was meant for the closest post. It was more open’.
At the time, Heskey didn’t even realize it had gone in. ‘I marked my player so intensely that I turned around and thought: “Hold on, aren’t I supposed to head the ball now?”,’ says Mail Sport.
And so it continues. Over the years, Teddy Sheringham called it a ‘mis-hit’. David Beckham said it was a cross. Sol Campbell was firmly in the ‘fluky’ camp.
Another theory, as the story goes, is that Brazil captain Cafu remembered a match from seven years earlier when he sat in the stands to watch his Real Zaragoza team beat Arsenal in the 1995 Cup Winners Cup final.
Zaragoza won thanks to a dramatic winner in the 120th minute that came from the right, 40 yards out, and ran over the head of… David Seaman.
‘I warned Ronaldinho about it,’ Cafu told Mail Sport ahead of the 2022 World Cup. ‘I knew the goalkeeper would be out of position. Every time I see him I joke that I should be credited with an assist.’
Whether he meant it or not, the goal ended another England dream of winning a World Cup. There was a feeling among both England and Brazil that whoever won that quarter-final would go on to win the tournament. Brazil did, England were left with the feeling of what could – or should – have been. It’s a feeling that still lingers.
“It still feels like it was yesterday,” says Heskey. – The feeling of walking out of the tunnel and seeing the Brazilian team with the likes of Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldinho. Kaka, a future Ballon d’Or winner, was only on the bench! That feeling of going up a goal. The euphoria. The confidence of knowing we had a team that could win the tournament and win the game.
Brazil’s 2002 team is one of the most legendary World Cup winning teams of all time (Rivaldo and Ronaldo pictured kissing the trophy alongside ex-Arsenal star Gilberto Silva)
‘I remember the feeling of not being ready to go home. I would go all the way. I wanted my whole family to be out there a little longer. I wanted my children to see me play in a World Cup final.’
Mills still hasn’t seen the full game back. “I have it on VHS, it was so long ago,” he says. ‘I think my boys have seen bits of it, but I don’t really think I’ve ever seen the whole thing.
‘We believed we had a shot, that if we beat Brazil we had a chance to win the World Cup. In a heartbeat you go from ambitions of making a semi-final and going on, and suddenly you have to go home.’
And they had to go home despite Brazil playing the last half hour with 10 men after Mills, with a little help from Paul Scholes, conspired to have Ronaldinho sent off after the Brazilian nicked Mills on the shin.
“I wasn’t rolling around screaming,” Mills says. ‘I just lay dead still. I was going to get up, but then Scholesy pressed and said “stay down, stay down. He’s getting a card, stay down”. Then he pulled out a red one.
However, before the next flight home, Mills was brought in for a drugs test, where he was locked in a room with Cafu and Ronaldinho and ended up swapping shirts with the Brazil captain and almost hitting the match-winner.
“Cafu was first class,” he says. ‘Dignity, respect. He gave me his shirt – it’s in the attic in a box with all the others – but Ronaldinho sang and danced and laughed. We all know he liked to party. It wasn’t particularly… pleasant.’
That wasn’t the mood in the dressing room either. ‘It didn’t need to be said,’ says Heskey. ‘David (Seaman) was desperate after the goal. We just had to go around him and tell him he was still our goalkeeper.’
Mills believes Ronaldinho would cross it, while Heskey feels the legendary Brazilian star intended to score, but in the opposite corner to where he did.
Looking back, though, it wasn’t the team talk after the game that mattered.
Rivaldo equalized in first-half stoppage time. That was when England needed a boost. Eriksson did what he always did. He remained calm and composed. He let assistant Steve McClaren do most of the talking.
As the infamous Gareth Southgate quote goes: England ‘needed Winston Churchill but got Iain Duncan-Smith’.
“People always ask what was said at halftime, and to be honest, I don’t really know,” says Mills. ‘It probably speaks volumes that the greatest half-time team speech of all time and I can’t remember what was said or how it was delivered.’
Brazil, who arrive at Wembley on Saturday to face Southgate’s England, do so without the mystique of those World Cup winners.
Most of the current squad lack experience or are familiar faces from the Premier League. We see people like Lucas Paqueta, Bruno Guimaraes, Douglas Luiz or Richarlison every week.
They don’t have the aura of Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho, of Cafu and Carlos.
“They have great players but they don’t really have a superstar icon,” adds Heskey. “Maybe only Neymar.”
Ronaldinho would be sent off later in the half for a challenge on Mills, although England could not mount a comeback
For many in Brazil, however, the defining image of Neymar’s generation is Germany’s 7-1 semi-final humiliation at home in 2014. “Every day, a new 7-1” became a common phrase in Brazil as a response to something going wrong .
They also have another saying there. ‘Um ex-jogador em atidiva’ or ‘an ex-player who is still playing’. “It’s Neymar,” a source in Brazil told Mail Sport.
England have perhaps the biggest star of all in Jude Bellingham. However, even he cannot match the insane fame that surrounded another former Real Madrid midfielder in Beckham in 2002.
“We had security ships out on the water near our base,” says Mills. ‘Every time we left the hotel the streets were lined for 500 yards, 10 deep. After a game, Sven took us to a meal at the Hard Rock Café. They had to close four blocks so we could get the bus through. We played games where most of the stadium was wearing English shirts. I don’t think they had Mills in the back!’
At the end of it all, though, there might be a definite answer to the 22-year-old question.
Asked by FIFA if he mentioned, Ronaldinho replied: ‘When I hit the ball I wanted to shoot for goal – but maybe not exactly where the ball ended up. he said. ‘To be perfectly honest, I was aiming for the other side of the net.’
So there we go. Heskey was right all along. Case closed. However, the wounds are still very open.