EXCLUSIVEEx-England stars Emile Heskey and Danny Mills debate whether Ronaldinho REALLY meant his iconic lob over David Seaman... as they reflect on the Three Lions' World Cup quarter-final defeat by Brazil in 2002
- Mills and Heskey were part of the side that lost to Brazil at the 2002 World Cup
- Ronaldinho scored the decisive goal with his legendary 40-yard lob
- Brazil in blue – you want to think of yellow and Pele and not think about Everton - Listen to the It's All Kicking Off podcast
Even after all these years, the argument still rumbles on. Did he mean it? Was it a fluke? Could Ronaldinho possibly have spotted David Seaman off his line and popped the ball over his head and into the top corner from 40 yards away on purpose?
It was the goal that broke England hearts as Brazil knocked Sven-Goran Eriksson’s side out of the World Cup quarter-final in 2002 and one that every fan remembers where they were when they saw it float over Seaman.
More than two decades later, as those two countries meet again at Wembley on Saturday, the question remains contested.
‘There’s no way he meant it,’ Danny Mills, England’s right-back that day, tells Mail Sport. ‘As much as he can say that he did. I know he’s done some spectacular things in his career but the way he runs up to it, that’s not the body position of someone who’s going to do that.
‘I used to share a room with Nigel Martyn and he spent hours analysing David Beckham’s free-kicks. He’d watch his hand positions, his body positions, and pick on all those tiny cues. Looking at Ronaldinho’s body shape, he didn’t mean it.’
![England's clash with Brazil on Saturday brings back memories of Ronaldinho's lob that broke the Three Lions' hearts in the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/22/10/82769535-13227063-image-a-38_1711102536162.jpg)
England's clash with Brazil on Saturday brings back memories of Ronaldinho's lob that broke the Three Lions' hearts in the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup
![Emile Heskey and Danny Mills played in the game and debated whether Ronaldinho meant it](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/22/10/82769531-13227063-image-m-40_1711102588744.jpg)
Emile Heskey and Danny Mills played in the game and debated whether Ronaldinho meant it
![England took the lead through Michael Owen before Rivaldo and Ronaldinho won it for Brazil](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/22/10/82769539-13227063-image-a-41_1711102617840.jpg)
England took the lead through Michael Owen before Rivaldo and Ronaldinho won it for Brazil
‘I think he did mean it,’ contests Emile Heskey, who set up Michael Owen for England’s opening goal at the Shizuoka Stadium in Japan 22 years ago. ‘…but I don’t think it was actually meant for that corner. I think it was meant for the near post. It was more open there.’
At the time, Heskey didn’t even realise it had gone in. ‘I was marking my player so intently, that I turned around and thought “hang on, aren’t I supposed to be heading the ball now?”,’ he tells Mail Sport.
And so it goes on. Over the years, Teddy Sheringham called it a ‘mis-hit’. David Beckham said it was a cross. Sol Campbell was firmly in the ‘fluky’ camp.
Another theory, as the story goes, is that Brazil’s captain Cafu remembered a game from seven years earlier when he was sat in the stands to watch his Real Zaragoza side beat Arsenal in the 1995 Cup Winners Cup final.
Zaragoza won thanks to a dramatic 120th-minute winner that came from the right, 40 yards out, and looped over the head of… David Seaman.
‘I warned Ronaldinho about it,’ Cafu told Mail Sport ahead of the World Cup in 2022. ‘I knew the goalkeeper would be out of position. Every time I see him, I joke I should be credited with an assist.’
Whether he meant it or not, the goal ended yet another England dream of winning a World Cup. There was the feeling, among both England and Brazil, that whoever won that quarter-final would go on to win the tournament. Brazil did, England were left with the sense of what might – or should – have been. It’s a feeling that still rankles.
‘It still feels like it was yesterday,’ says Heskey. ‘The feeling of walking out of the tunnel and seeing that Brazil team with the likes of Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldinho. Kaka, a future Ballon d’Or winner, was only on the bench! That feeling of going a goal up. That euphoria. The confidence of knowing we had a team able to win the tournament and win the game.
![The 2002 Brazil side is one of the most legendary World Cup winning teams of all time (Rivaldo and Ronaldo pictured kissing the trophy alongside ex-Arsenal star Gilberto Silva)](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/22/10/82769541-13227063-image-a-42_1711102651500.jpg)
The 2002 Brazil side is one of the most legendary World Cup winning teams of all time (Rivaldo and Ronaldo pictured kissing the trophy alongside ex-Arsenal star Gilberto Silva)
‘I remember the feeling of not being ready to go home. I wanted to go all the way. I wanted all my family to be out there a little longer. I wanted my kids to see my playing in a World Cup final.’
Mills still hasn’t watched the whole game back. ‘I’ve got it on VHS, that’s how long ago it was,’ he says. ‘I think my boys have watched bits of it but I don’t really think I’ve ever watched the whole thing.
‘We believed we had a shot, that if we beat Brazil we had a chance of winning the World Cup. In a heartbeat you go from aspirations of making a semi-final and going on and suddenly you’re going home.’
And they were going home despite Brazil playing the last half an hour with 10 men after Mills, with a little help from Paul Scholes, conspired to get Ronaldinho sent off after the Brazilian caught Mills on the shin.
‘I didn’t roll around screaming,’ says Mills. ‘I just lay dead still. I was going to get up but then Scholesy tapped and said “stay down, stay down. He’s getting a card out, stay down”. Then he pulled out a red one.’
Before the next flight home, however, Mills was hauled in for a drugs test that saw him locked in a room with Cafu and Ronaldinho and ended with him swapping shirts with Brazil’s captain and nearly punching the match-winner.
‘Cafu was first-class,’ he says. ‘Dignity, respect. He gave me his shirt – it’s in the loft in a box with all the others – but Ronaldinho was singing and dancing and having a laugh. We all know he liked to party. It wasn’t particularly… comfortable.’
Neither was the atmosphere in the dressing room. ‘Nothing needed to be said,’ says Heskey. ‘David [Seaman] was distraught after the goal. We just needed to get around him and tell him he was still our goalie.’
![Mills believes Ronaldinho meant to cross it, while Heskey feels the legendary Brazil star meant to score but in the opposite corner to where he did](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/22/10/82769533-13227063-image-a-43_1711102708055.jpg)
Mills believes Ronaldinho meant to cross it, while Heskey feels the legendary Brazil star meant to score but in the opposite corner to where he did
Looking back, though, it wasn’t the post-match team-talk that mattered.
Rivaldo equalised in first-half stoppage time. It was then England needed a boost. Eriksson did what he always did. He remained calm and steady. He let assistant Steve McClaren do most of the talking.
As the infamous Gareth Southgate quote goes: England ‘needed Winston Churchill, but got Iain Duncan-Smith’.
‘People always ask what was said at half-time and, if I’m honest, I don’t really know,’ says Mills. ‘That probably speaks volumes the fact that the biggest half-time team talk ever and I can’t remember what was said or how it was delivered.’
The Brazil that arrives at Wembley on Saturday to face Southgate’s England does so without the mystique of those World Cup winners.
Most of the current squad lack experience or are familiar faces from the Premier League. We see the likes of Lucas Paqueta, Bruno Guimaraes, Douglas Luiz or Richarlison every week.
They don’t have the aura of Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho, of Cafu and Carlos.
‘They have got fantastic players but they haven’t really got a superstar icon,’ adds Heskey. ‘Perhaps only Neymar.’
![Ronaldinho would get sent off later in the half for a challenge on Mills, though England could not mount a comeback](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/22/10/82769651-13227063-image-a-44_1711102906404.jpg)
Ronaldinho would get sent off later in the half for a challenge on Mills, though England could not mount a comeback
For many in Brazil, though, the defining image of Neymar’s generation is the 7-1 humiliation by Germany in the semi-finals on home soil in 2014. ‘Every day, a new 7-1’ became a common turn of phrase in Brazil as a retort to something going wrong.
They have another saying there, too. ‘Um ex-jogador em atividade’ or ‘an ex-player who is still playing’. ‘That’s Neymar,’ one source in Brazil told Mail Sport.
England, perhaps, have the biggest star of all in Jude Bellingham. Even he, though, can’t match the frenzied fame that surrounded another, former, Real Madrid midfielder in Beckham in 2002.
‘We had security ships out on the water near our base,’ says Mills. ‘Every time we left the hotel, the streets were lined for 500 yards, 10 deep. After one game, Sven took us for a meal at the Hard Rock Café. They had to close four blocks so we could get the bus through. We played games where most of the stadium were wearing England shirts. I don’t think they had Mills on the back!’
At the end of it all, though, perhaps there is a definite answer to the 22-year-old question.
When asked by FIFA about whether he mentioned, Ronaldinho replied: ‘When I hit the ball I wanted to shoot for goal – but maybe not exactly where the ball ended up. he said. ‘If I'm being totally honest, I was aiming for the other side of the net.’
So, there we go. Heskey was right all along. Case closed. Wounds, however, still very much open.