By announcing Robinho’s name in the Brazil squad for this month’s international friendlies, the coach of next year’s World Cup hosts, Luis “Felipao” Scolari, provoked more questions than answers.
Why, after more than two years absent from the squad, had the little enigma now been recalled, Brazil-watchers asked in unison?
Was it because of a shortage of attacking players? Or because of Robinho’s goal for AC Milan against Barcelona?
Was Scolari pleasantly startled by the way the lithe playmaker hassled and muscled up against the tall, strong Gerard Pique in that game?
Or has he been picked because Diego Costa, the in-form Atletico Madrid striker with his newly acquired Spanish citizenship, has decided to turn his back on the country of his birth?
Whatever the rationale, the news came as a surprise.
“We have been observing him for a while,” Scolari said, “and he’s experienced. He’s played in two World Cups and can operate in any of the attacking positions. I like the joy he brings to the game, and we just need to see now how he fits in with the spirit of this squad.”
Robinho will join Brazil next week. In the meantime, it is by no means certain that he will start for his club team in the Uefa Champions League tonight at Camp Nou, despite his contribution to the 1-1 draw between Milan and Barcelona at San Siro 15 days ago.
In Milan’s last two matches, he has played all of seven minutes. Massimiliano Allegri, the Milan coach, opted not to use him at all last Sunday against Fiorentina, even though Milan were trailing in the match.
That typifies the mixed attitude that many coaches have had over the last six or seven years regarding Robinho.
Nobody doubts the feathery footwork or the dexterous ball control. Scolari’s eye was no doubt caught, during the Milan-Barcelona contest, with the dazzling trick that Robinho produced at one stage to confound compatriot Dani Alves, lodging the ball, while on the move, between his ankles, as if they were a pair of tongs gripping a hot coal, to then lob it over Alves’s head.
Robinho gained widespread fame as a child prodigy with manoeuvres of that sort, notably a rapid sequence of stepovers, nicknamed the “pedalada” because it resembles the foot movements of a cyclist.
That capacity to entertain spurred his high-profile move, while still a teenager, from Santos to Real Madrid.
But his capacity to frustrate, vanish from contests and grow restless would become as much of a signature.
Along with the pedaladas came episodes of petulance. At Madrid, his coach, Fabio Capello, lost his trust in Robinho, though he would be grateful for the player’s decisive input, at the tail end of 2006/07, to Madrid’s seizing a league championship.
A year later, Robinho left Spain after a wilful confrontation with the club, stating that he wanted to join Chelsea, where Scolari was then in charge. He then acquiesced when Manchester City were suddenly prepared to make him the most expensive player in English football at the time.
He was not good value, his man-of-the-match performances becoming less frequent and his commitment visibly waning. At City, Roberto Mancini, another Italian coach, lost faith, too. Robinho only went to the 2010 World Cup thanks to a six-month loan spell at Santos, where he recovered his mojo.
His Milan career, which included a scudetto in his first season, has been a patchwork of indifferent spells and occasional inspiration. The club paid City €15 million (Dh74.3m) for him, and despite his signing a new contract last summer, remains sellable if the right offer arrived.
Fans have not warmed to Robinho in large numbers, and many Milan supporters wonder why he, and not Kaka, has been recalled to the Brazil squad this month.
Kaka enjoyed an unusually impressive night against Barcelona in the first Group H meeting. He also injected a little joy into the football of a Milan whose recent Serie A outings have been conspicuously short of that commodity.
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