Soccer: Ronaldo's performers turn on the style

PORTUGAL 7
NORTH KOREA 0

Time hangs heavy for soccer players in a World Cup, and the men of North Korea have spent their time in hotels watching programmes they cannot possibly understand but fascinated by the realisation that there is more than one channel.

North Korean television usually shows only sporting victories and took 17 hours to decide that their highly creditable 2-1 defeat by Brazil could be screened.

During their successful qualification campaign for South Africa, some claimed the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il sent tactical advice to the team manager, Kim Jong-hun, via an invisible mobile phone.

The signal must have been lost in the ether because, after an opening yesterday when the Koreans looked as determined as they had been at Ellis Park, they caved in completely, conceding three times in seven second-half minutes and three more in the closing moments against Portugal.

To England and Italy, this was an object lesson in how to deal with minor opposition in the World Cup.

To Sven Goran Eriksson this was a mortal blow. In both Euro 2004 and in the last World Cup, his team was eliminated by Portugal and to all intents the latest improbable vehicle for his managerial career, Ivory Coast, were put out of the tournament by this Portuguese landslide.

Unless they are to become the latest victim of what has been a lethal World Cup for African nations, Ivory Coast need a 10-goal swing in the final round of matches. If Brazil beat Portugal by three goals, they will need to score seven against North Korea to go through.

It is as improbable as the thought that, since assuming the Portuguese captaincy, Cristiano Ronaldo had not scored competitively for two years. On Monday afternoon he rounded on a reporter who reminded him and vowed to redress the fact against the Koreans.

There were only three minutes remaining when he did and five others had been there before him. Even then there was an element of comedy about his goal.

Liedson took the ball from a clearly exhausted defender, fed Ronaldo, whose shot was blocked by the North Korean keeper, Ri Myong-Guk; the ball flew up, landed on Ronaldo's back, briefly bounced on to those carefully sculptured locks and then fell at his feet.

Eusebio, whose brilliance had overturned North Korea's three-goal advantage at Goodison Park in the 1966 quarter-final, peered through the rain and gave his successor the thumbs-up.

There was an irony that one of the world's most marketed footballers had scored against the last bastion of Communism but Ronaldo saw it as a marker for the rest of the tournament.

"I told you the goals would come," he said. "I burst out laughing when I scored because it was so comical. This has electrified the whole team. To score seven is amazing but we also deserve a lot of praise for playing such attractive football while we did it."

The seven goals Portugal scored beneath skies as grey as any government building in Pyongyang were as many as they had managed in their whole campaign four years ago, when they finished fourth. Ronaldo created the best of the seven, sprinting through and pulling the ball back for Tiago Mendes, who finished crisply, although it was the first goal, put away by Raul Meireles from Tiago's wonderfully judged pass, that ensured the game would go only one way.

It is odd that in a country where, under apartheid, sport and politics were ruled indivisible that so little should have been said about the nature of the North Korean regime.

But they, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1986, Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti in 1974 and the Greater Germany team overseen by Joseph Goebbels will leave the World Cup at the first available opportunity.

- Independent