Ronaldo suffered convulsions before final

The 21-year old player, whose poor performance was among the reasons for his team loss 0-3 to France, was shown on a TV Globo news report saying that after the fit he went to sleep and 8220;woke up with pains all over my body.8221;

8220;It was something real bad that I had never before felt in my whole life. I really felt bad. I had a headache, my stomach pained,8221; the player said earlier in an interview with the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo.

8220;I don8217;t remember properly but I went to sleep and then, like the doctor said, it seems I had a fit for 30 or 40 seconds,8221; he said.

8220;I woke up then and my whole body was in pain.But with time the pain got less and I relaxed a bit.8221;

Ronaldo was taken to hospital for tests and cleared to play.

8220;I could have chickened out but after the problem I decided to play and I went out there to help the team,8221; he said.

Coach Zagallo confirmed that Ronaldo came in the stadium before the game kicked off and asked to play.

The first signs in the stadium that anything was amiss came when a team sheet was issued without Ronaldo8217;s name.

A revised sheet included the striker but it was clear that all was not as it should be in the Brazilian camp when the team failed to appear for the pre-match warm-up.

Ronaldo8217;s listless display mirrored that of his team and the post-mortems had begun among the Brazilian supporters before the final whistle had blown.8220;I didn8217;t want to find any excuses for the defeat,8221; Ronaldo said. 8220;They played well. The two goals from corners were clearly our mistakes but they played better than us.8221;

Soccer king Pele said in a television talk show late Sunday thatRonaldo should have not played. 8220;What surprised me most is that he went on to play even in the second half.8221;

Shoe firm Nike, who sponsor the Brazilian team and had launched an advertising campaign based on Ronaldo, denied they had put pressure on Brazil to play an obviously unfit player.

8220;With regard to rumours circulating about presumed pressures Nike put on the Brazilian national soccer team so that Ronaldo would play, Nike wants to emphasise that the report of such involvement is absolutely false,8221; a statement said yesterday.

The statement was released by the Italian branch of Nike in response to a directive from company headquarters in the United States, Nike Italy spokesman Massimo Giunco said.

There were unsubstantiated stories of a fracas in the dressing room before the match and further unconfirmed reports that Brazilian football federation chief Ricardo Texeira had insisted Ronaldo should play.

At the heart of the storm, Ronaldo will now almost certainly need yet another knee operation,which will hardly please Inter who paid a small fortune to prise him away from Barcelona.

Unlike Pele, who played 17 years for his club Santos, Ronaldo performs weekly in arguably the world8217;s toughest league and will be the target for foreign defenders in the European Cup. Further reports, denied by Brazil, said Ronaldo was given pain-killing injections before each World Cup match, raising unhappy parallels with the flawed Diego Maradona. Maradona8217;s world began to unravel when he required a constant diet of painkillers after being mercilessly hacked down by defenders desperate to stop him at any cost. Fit, partially fit or patently unfit, Ronaldo is under constant pressure to play and justify the investments of country, club and sponsors.

Injury restricted Pele to two games and one goal in each of the 1962 and 1966 World Cups, but he was still able to crown his career with the 1970 champions, possibly the finest international XI to take the field.

Ronaldo should have another chance on another continentin four years to do himself justice on a World Cup stage.

Already, though, the pressures of modern day football threaten to literally cripple him and in the afterglow of a memorable tournament, his career is at the crossroads.