Football: Mystifying dance of the vegetables

Andrew Longmore found himself lost in the opening clash of bagpipe, samba and French imagination

IT COULD never live up to the hype. By definition, opening matches never can. But that was not the point of the exercise. Yesterday was a day to see and be seen, a cross between a children's party and the Oscars, with a touch of Eurovision song contest thrown in for good measure. By the end, L'Ecosse had nul points and Les Braziliens trois.

The football was sharp, sporadically electric when Ronaldo was involved, and the Scots played the role of bravehearts to near perfection, battling ceaselessly but losing gallantly. The World Cup needs its champions, there is a time and place for the underdog.

With a conservative estimate of two billion people tuned in, the product was too precious to offer up to such a temperamental god as sport. Fleetingly, you had the impression that if they could, Fifa would choreograph the football as well as all the ceremonials. "I hope you enjoyed the first half..." intoned the ringmaster on the microphone, just in case you had misplaced the right emotion. Comme ci, comme ca, as Glenn Hoddle would say.

Had the aesthetes behind the esoteric opening ceremony been granted their way, the winning goal, an inadvertent rebound off the chest of poor Tommy Boyd, would never have been allowed. Far too ugly.

The French have yet to comprehend quite what the fuss is about. They are, en masse, reluctant jingoists. L'Equipe, the French sporting daily, devoted five pages of coverage to Brazil yesterday morning, a paltry two to their own team. With supporters pocketed in two corners of the Stade de France, much of the football was played in an atmosphere more attuned to the historic basilica with which the spanking new stadium now shares its skyline.

The little mustard field of Brazilians, in particular, must have felt a long way from the emotional hothouse of the Maracana, for all the promising beginning of their champions. A goal up in four minutes and you could still hear a pin drop.

In Montpellier, the Living in the Present anarchists announced themselves as the "official opponents" of the World Cup and threw a football-free party to celebrate the occasion. Over the next five weeks, the non-believers will be a global minority. Stop the World Cup, I want to get off. The trouble for World Cups past is that the official opening parties have also been largely football-free.

The presence of the Scots, swathed in kilts, flags and, incongruously, Brazil T-shirts, had already ensured a vigorous police presence in the centre of Paris the previous night - and round a highly security conscious stadium yesterday - the fear of an outbreak of what they chillingly call here "violence Anglaise" mingling with the unspoken threat of terrorist attack. But the only discordant note was sounded by the unholy combination of bagpipe and samba drum. Someone musical should have thought of such a disastrous musical score at the draw all those months ago.

Other than to confirm the peculiar French fixation with animated root vegetables, quite what the global village made of the opening ceremony heaven alone knows. "The stadium is a garden, a magic garden..." there were 380 hedge- hoppers, five gigantic flowers, 50 noise-makers and a whole allotment full of dancing veg. A 10-page interpretation was provided in three languages, although no one was much the wiser.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the players are ready. It is time for the final countdown." At the magic word, "tifo", the stadium was turned into a moving mosaic and, glory be, some footballers appeared, fully 15 minutes before the first whistle. For some, it must have been the longest, most static, quarter of an hour of their lives. The jeers of the Scottish fans punctuated the welcome speech of Joao Havelange, the outgoing president of Fifa, chief culprit in the Great Ticket Affair; the ire of the Brazilian crowd was reserved for their coach, Mario Zagallo, their adulation for Ronaldo.

Without fully finding true harmony, the Brazilians worked to more complex rhythms than the Scots, like their supporters in the bars on the Champs Elysees on Tuesday night.

Without putting the finishing touch to his work, Ronaldo's pace and work- rate proved a constant threat to the Scottish defence. His one solo run and turn defied the laws of geometry. Through fear of over-commitment or a red card, Colin Hendry held off. Ronaldo exploited the fraction of space allotted to him beat three Scottish players before his wicked cross- shot was excellently saved by Jim Leighton.

These are early days for the champions; glimpses of vintage 1982 mixed with a sourer 1994. If they master the counter-point, someone will pay. But not yesterday, not in the straitjacketed atmosphere of the Stade de France. "Thank you for being with us today, Fifa and all its officials wish you all a thrilling World Cup." Now the show is over, let the football begin.