Why Eriksson is still a class apart

"We've kept in touch occasionally and since then, I've watched his expertise grow like a crescendo so that now he's at the peak of his powers at the right time. He's such a calm person, he passes this serenity on to his players. In all the time I knew him, he never once raised his voice. People who are confident in their own ideas don't need to."

In a way, Falcao claims, they were very similar. What, the ice-cool Swede and the man we always remember looking so emotionally Brazilian when he wheeled way, open-mouthed and fist-pumping, after thumping one of the World Cup's great goals in one of its great matches against Italy in the 1982 World Cup?

"Yes, but I come from the very south of Brazil where people's temperament is very similar to the Swedish. So they always used to know me as the Swedish Brazilian."

It's a temperament, you suspect, which must have served him well in Spain when he was a hero of that sumptuous 1982 side which some of us still regret bitterly ever had to run into the inspired Paolo Rossi in that epic against Italy.

Because here in the national team's hotel just 48 hours before the biggest match of this World Cup, you get a feel for what they, what every Brazilian team has to endure. Fans, journalists, curious Japanese and assorted hangers-on are milling around and when Roberto Carlos suddenly emerges in the lobby, they all descend on him in a manic swarm.

The contrast with their Shizuoka opponents' cloistered existence could not be more pronounced. England are huge in Japan but, largely, they are invisible. Brazil are just as huge but, apparently, public property. You wonder how they cope with all the madness.

Yet it was ever thus, says Falcao. He's done and seen it all; as a top club player, as a coach of Brazil and also of the Japanese national team, which is why he remains so popular here, and now he's probably the Brazilian football media's biggest celebrity as the top commentarista - their answer to El Tel - for the giant TV Globo network. The Brazilian FA recently tried to hire him as national team director but they couldn't agree a deal.

Yet nothing was ever like pulling on that shirt. Was it always like this, I ask him. Glancing across at the throng surrounding Roberto Carlos, he thanks me with a shudder for reminding him. "Yes. You have to be completely prepared to meet that pressure, to deal with the emotion of competing for your country," he smiles.

"You have to respect and meet head on that massive expectation of supporters. It's beautiful; it's feedback."

Yet what if it goes wrong? For him and that dazzling class of '82 with Junior, Socrates, Eder, Cerezo and Zico, it finally did in the quarterfinals. They were great but they were losers. Now here in Korea and Japan was another team which plays the game with the same elan, even if in truth they surely can't quite compare. History repeating itself perhaps?

Falcao won't be drawn into comparisons- - "the game has changed so much, it's impossible", he says - yet neither will he go overboard about the boys of 2002. "It hasn't given me a thrill yet," he says. "When Brazil play small sides, it means nothing; when they play a big side then I think they're exciting to watch." Only now against England, he says, will his blood start to race.

"Eriksson has revolutionised this English team," he said. "In the past, it used to be based on kicking the ball high and long aiming for a big centre-forward. Under Hoddle in France, I noted how their game had changed, the way they pass and cross the ball is less predictable. Eriksson has perfected this.

"He's very astute tactically and having coached big players in big teams and gained such wide experiences in different footballing cultures, he has immense knowledge." Yet, essentially, he believes, Eriksson's belief in direct, quick forward passing has never really changed.

So what of the match? Like many observers, he finds it an impossibly difficult call. "Collectively, England are having a big spell. They are the best markers and the best at pressurising opponents in the competition. When they score, it's difficult to recover.

"But Brazil has something nobody has - the individual skills. Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Denilson . . . they can change a game in an instant."

Yet Brazil's defence, given no effective shield by an unbalanced midfield up against the solid "Manchester United" heart of Scholes and Butt, worries him. His 1982 boys, he is keen to point out, were defensively sound even if the legend of their Italian lapse persuades us otherwise.

"I know it concerns (coach Luiz Felipe) Scolari," he says. "If he finds the right balance then it will be a great midfield duel." But the result? "All I can say is that it will go down to a golden goal."

Scolari, I remind him, had claimed Brazil's beautiful game was dead but hadn't this 2002 side, even if it wasn't as glorious as his, at least provided a brief kiss of life?

Falcao ponders for a moment. "The individuality of Brazilian players is where the beauty still lies," he says.

"It's the beauty of Rivaldo killing the ball on his chest against Belgium and conjuring a goal from nothing. Yet only a team as a whole can play the beautiful game and, well, this team still looks . . . "

He searches for the word and the interpreter translates it with a smile as "soggy".

What, a soggy team pitted against Eriksson's mind, the sharpest he knows in football? Falcao, a man who helped show the world how the beautiful game could be played, has given us all hope.