Brazilian gold

 Brazilian gold

The announcement was made shortly after breakfast. There were fanfares and trumpets, heralds and standard bearers. There was rapturous acclaim, stunned astonishment and a general mood of rejoicing. Nothing had happened like this since the last time a Premier League football club had made a similarly remarkable signing which these days seem to be more of a frequent occurrence than a VAR decision made in controversial circumstances or when that stupid white spray is used by a bored referee.

Yesterday your team West Ham United made the kind of signing that almost left us in an ecstatic state of the mind and rather like a man in a drunken stupor without even touching a drop of the hard stuff. Already West Ham have persuaded seven new players to enter through the hallowed corridors of the London Stadium and then the Rush Green training ground in Romford, Essex that is their fairly recent new home.

Firstly, there was the Moroccan defender Nayef Aguerd followed by lifelong West Ham fan Flynn Downes from Swansea and then, most importantly,  West Ham's new centre forward Gianluca Scamacca. The Italian was  genuinely welcomed into the club in much the way that the Pope is normally received whenever he steps onto the airport tarmac of any country he may be visiting. Maxwel Cornet, a winger by trade but immensely versatile when the mood suits him or the occasion merits it, was the next arrival from relegated Burnley and then we had yesterday when the world took a sharp intake of breath.

Yesterday Lucas Paqueta, by all accounts, one of the most sensational players ever to have joined West Ham in recent times, signed for the London Stadium club in a five year deal and the cost was over £52 million. Yes folks £52 million. Suddenly your mind travelled back to a far distant day in the late 1970s when Phil Parkes became the most expensive goalkeeper in Britain, and quite possibly the world, when he signed for West Ham with a £565,000 price tag attached to him.

But for obvious reasons some of us could hardly believe this story. It had surely been made up, some hallucination, some made up joke, a trick of the eye. Or maybe it was blissfully true and all West Ham fans birthdays had come at once. Lucas Paqueta, formerly of Lyon in France and before then AC Milan, had taken that giant leap of faith and decided that his future lay at the club whose representatives had once brought home England's only World Cup victory in 1966.

So you swallowed hard, gulped for a minute or two, pulled the toast away from your mouth, slurped a satisfying cup of coffee and didn't think for a minute that you'd seen or heard this milestone moment, this notable landmark, the most radical of breakthroughs. There you were wondering whether anything was going to change at the home of the claret and blue world beaters and then a Brazilian comes along and makes you think of one of the country's greatest of them all. His name was Pele but surely Paqueta isn't the modern day incarnation of the great man. Or is he?

For the last couple of days you have followed the latest developments of this amazing transfer window saga and for a minute, were caught up in its byzantine complexity, its bizarre twists and turns before recognising that it was for real. Firstly, the Lyon president demanded well over £35 million and then swiftly changed his mind at least two or three times. Then you remembered the greedy and mercenary nature of the world football transfer market and feared the worst.

What followed now was some ludicrous game of the Price is Right, a popular TV quiz show in Britain from yesteryear when most footballers were simply content with their lot. Initially Paqueta was just a chess piece and then he became a pawn. Now the cattle market began to grow in its feverish intensity. The auction sale had begun and the bidders became more vociferous by the minute and hour. Did we hear anybody from the back of the room?

With every passing minute you looked, hoped for and wished that at long last West Ham were about to mean business, that this wasn't any old season when only mediocrity stalks the Hammers all the way to the opening game of the season. The irony was, of course that at least six of the players who had already joined the club were ready in situ for the opening day contest against Manchester City at home followed by the matches at newly promoted Nottingham Forest and last Sunday the 2-0 defeat and debacle to Brighton at the London Stadium. Any advances on £52million.

Suddenly, we thought our eyes were deceiving us. Brazil, undoubtedly the most magical, mercurial, stunning, beautifully constructed national team of all time, had given West Ham, one of its finest modern day products, a spectacular play maker, match winner with one of the most impulsive touches and a footballing academic with honours degrees after his name, an artist with all his oils and watercolours in place just in time to see his club at the bottom of the Premier League. Now that's what some of us call perfect timing.

The nostalgic time keepers among us flicked back through their memories and went right back to the last time the Brazilians had transfixed us, left us besotted and smitten, drooling and swooning at its utter brilliance. In recent years the Premier League had jolted us out of our seats with the enchanting Juninho who came to Middlesbrough during the 1990s, stayed for a while and then left with adoration ringing in his ears. Emerson also donned Boro colours but then complained about the cold British winters. 

But then you cast your mind back 52 years ago to your youth and recalled how mesmerised you were by Brazilian football even though you had no clear recognition of the game itself. In Mexico City the Brazil of Tostao, Gerson, Rivellino, Carlos Alberto and the incomparable Pele. Even farther back in time there was the tricky Didi and the vivacious Va Va, players with a thoroughbred pedigree and who had to pull themselves out of the poverty and squalor that had fallen over Brazil just after the Second World War and the 1950s.

Brazil though were all about intuitive and counter intuitive football, vivid patterns and shapes on the pitch itself, breath taking improvisation, off the cuff, witty, humorous play, pretty cameos, short, sharp and instinctive passing that gave rise to clarity, coherence and cohesion. They played the game as some of us have always believed it should be played, along the ground, within close proximity of team mates, patient and persevering, clever and cunning, grammatically perfect.

And now Lucas Paqueta is the new Brazilian on the block at West Ham. Some of the more cynical among their fans may point out that their last South American wizard Felipe Anderson didn't really meet any of the club's specific requirements. For a while the goals seemed to flow but then Anderson seemed to hit a brick wall and the thrilling running and delicate touch deserted Anderson and that was his final bow for the club.

But the Brazilians are back in the East End of London and your vocabulary continues to serve you well. Brazil are infinitely inventive, wondrously perceptive, ostentatious and demonstrative. They reflect the whole of the country's passionate love of the game, their genetic feeling for the game and of course there's the intimate relationship with the ball at all times since family and friends still play football from early morning to the darkness of night. The Copacabana beach is still bursting with football. 

In the favelas and shanty towns, football is Brazil's provincial theatre and mainstream play stage. The country has now six World Cups under its belt and the image of a young Pele at 17 trapping the ball with his chest ingeniously and scoring one of the goals that beat Sweden in the 1958 World Cup Final still melts your heart whenever you see it. 

And so it is that Paqueta arrives in Stratford with West Ham rooted to the bottom of the Premier League. You suspect that he may have had pause for thought on his flight over to England because, quite frankly a relegation struggle may not have been uppermost in his mind. Paqueta has obviously been brought to make and score goals and at the moment, none are on the board for West Ham.

At the moment the Brazilian should be taking his medical and wrapping up the formalities before running out in claret and blue. Tomorrow West Ham go to Villa Park for a Premier League match that already has a critical look about it. The Villa game may not be the right environment for Paqueta to throw himself into. But next weekend West Ham meet their noisy London neighbours Spurs at the London Stadium and even now this one could be electrifyingly atmospheric.

The kettle though is on for Lucas Paqueta and the man whose country has given the world some of the most fragrant coffee plantations, will be posing for the cameras in East London. He may not know what is about to him and therefore cautionary warnings should be issued. West Ham were always regarded as the one of the game's most cheerful entertainers and, to some extent, still are. But then invitations are left in their defence, the back doors are flung wide open and everybody has left the lights on. For Lucas Paqueta this is the moment when cultural shifts are achieved and rock bottom of the Premier League turns into the dizzy heights of the top flight. We can only hope.