Stefan Lovgren

Four years ago, Ronaldinho won the World Cup as part of a Brazilian ensemble that impressed but didn’t dazzle.

This summer, he returns to soccer’s biggest stage as the undisputed king of the soccer world, leading what could be one of the greatest teams Brazil has ever fielded.

The pressure on him is immense.

For a World Cup to be considered truly great, it needs a superstar to dominate. Someone like Diego Maradona, who single-handedly won Argentina the title in 1986.

All eyes are now on Ronaldinho to be that guy, because if anyone is to dominate it is the 26-year-old Brazilian with the sublime skills and the goofy grin. He is that rare exception — a player who lives up to his hype.

His vision, passing skills, and dazzling party tricks make him the best player in the world. But it’s his ever-smiling, laid-back attitude that makes him the most likeable, too.

“I just love playing soccer,” he told the hordes of reporters gathered at the Brazilians’ training camp in the Swiss Alps this week. “A World Cup is an opportunity to play along the best players in the world as millions of people watch. If things don’t go as planned, it’s the way it goes.”

Ronaldinho is coming off his best season yet. He led his club team Barcelona to a second straight Spanish title, scoring 25 goals in all competitions, a personal best. Two weeks ago, he won the Champions League with the Catalan giants. Now he has a chance to cap off his season with a World Cup victory with the Brazilian national team.

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It seems strange to think that only three years ago, Ronaldinho was toiling in the French league, playing for a mediocre Paris Saint-Germain team.

His move to Barcelona in 2003 almost didn’t happen.

The team’s first-choice signing was David Beckham. But the glitzy Englishman opted for Real Madrid instead, which opened the door for Ronaldinho to follow in the footsteps of compatriots Ronaldo, Romario, and Rivaldo at Barcelona.

And his impact at Barcelona has been profound.

Along with Real Madrid reject Samuel Eto’o, he has elevated the Catalans from La Liga also-rans to being the most dominant club in Europe.

He is renowned for his party tricks — exquisite little dribbles in which he doesn’t actually touch the ball are particular favorites — but tricks may not be the right term to describe his skills. He rarely executes his dazzling skills without real purpose behind them.

Take his ability to make a blind pass, for example, something he reportedly perfected after spending hours watching old footage of Magic Johnson do it on the basketball court. He can fool entire defenses with a fake look in one direction and an incisive pass unleashed in the other.

“You have to keep moving whenever he gets the ball,” says Henrik Larsson, the Barcelona striker who in the past two years has formed an almost telepathic understanding with Ronaldinho. “If you make the right run, he’ll find a way to get you the ball.”

For all his individual talent, his greatest achievement may be the way he helps his teammates become better players.

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Even the notoriously hard-to-please Brazilian soccer journalists are coming around to the idea that Ronaldinho may ultimately come to rank as one of the greatest players ever.

“The expectation in Brazil is that he could easily be the number two in the history of soccer [after Pele],” says Rodrigo Bueno, a soccer writer for the Folha newspaper in Sao Paolo.

Bueno says that when Ronaldinho won the first of his two FIFA World Player of the Year awards, many journalists, including himself, argued that Ronaldinho didn’t deserve the award because he didn’t score enough goals.

“Since last year, he has scored many goals, some of them with great beauty, and he has won big championships,” says Bueno.

He delivered perhaps his most impressive performance in Barcelona’s 3-0 demolition of its arch rival Real Madrid last November. After scoring a second superb goal, Ronaldinho was even given a standing ovation by the Madrid fans.

Who knows how much the Ronaldinho phenomenon will continue to grow. He was recently named the most commercially valuable player in the world by a German consulting company.

Unlike the player he supplanted on top of that list, David Beckham, who owes his popularity as much to his handsome looks as to the accuracy of his crosses, Ronaldinho very much looks like the greatest player in the world, too.