One of the best memories I have from football was in July 1980 when, having just flown into Rio de Janeiro at the start of a wonderful four-month trek through South America, I lay on Copacabana Beach feasting
my eyes on ad-hoc games of barefoot football and beautiful women.

Barefoot football on sand? You didn’t get that on Hackney Marshes, but these guys were lethal, flicks here, shimmies there, and like dear old Arsenal under Monsieur Wenger, it was not enough to score, you had to score in style – which of course they did.

The following night a childhood dream was realised as I sat in an empty Maracana Stadium (if you call 70,000 empty, that is), watching Flamengo play Olimpia of Paraguay in the South American club championship. Something struck me that night about Brazilian football, something I have never forgotten. Tricky movement and subtle nuances for the game are all well and good, but it’s no use playing football like the Harlem Globetrotters play basketball when you have a Cup to win. Interestingly, despite being on the back foot all night, Olimpia pulled a goal back thanks to sloppy defending by the home team.

Of course, Brazil and their players are a real attraction. The rhythm, the movement off the ball, the joy of watching the ball do the work. But that didn’t help in 1982 when the Italians showed the great team of Zico and Dr Socrates how to win a quarter-final, nor last year when Thierry Henry and Co made tricky Ronaldinho look like a spinning top with nowhere to hide.

Yes, I know Brazil have won the World Cup five times, and of course I love to watch them play, but my point is whether there is room for their kind of stylish, almost impudent approach in modern football. The greatest team ever, the 1970 Mexico World Cup winners, were playing in an era when football was much more a multi-national sport than a multi-national business.

And like Friday night at Wembley, businesses have been getting wise to this competitive designer brand of yellow and blue chic. And you had a replica of what is happening on the UK High Street where Primark is
overtaking Bond Street as the followers of fashion realising that a basic garment that is cheap and functional is as good as haute couture that costs the earth.

You wouldn’t have expected John Terry and debutant Nicky Shorey et al to subdue the likes of Kaka and Ronaldinho, but they did with consummate ease, and although the English midfield did not match the fashion icons for creative flair, those Primark long-lasting shirts over Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard ran and ran in the wash and came out looking reasonably clean.

With a performance like that, you would expect England to comfortably beat Estonia in a game that matters on Wednesday, but of course we have been down that road many times before. The stoppage-time Brazilian equaliser was a stark reminder that one lapse of concentration can mean the difference between qualifying and not qualifying for Euro 2008.

It would, of course, be really good if football was played along the floor with skill winning over force. But life is not as straight-forward, and compromise is called for. In the last few minutes, our fashion icons in
yellow and blue were pumping hopeful long balls upfield as they realised the quickest route to goal was on the motorway, not a scenic ride through quaint villages. And in the end the equaliser came.

The problem with football (or maybe it’s not a problem) is that you don’t get anything for playing ‘nicely’, you get something for scoring goals. As I get older, I realise that on that glorious day on the Copacaban, my eyes would have been better staying firmly focused on the girls rather than the barefoot footballers, because, as the football parlance goes, at the end of the day, the result is all that matters.