Brazil managed, on Sunday, to do what no one had thought it was capable of doing: It played 90 minutes of totally boring, relentlessly negative soccer. The result, in Brazil’s first qualifying game for the 2010 World Cup, was a tedious 0–0 tie with Colombia.

This, mind you, was from a Brazil team that included Kaka and Ronaldinho, two of the most brilliant attacking players in the world. Excuses? Oh yes, there were excuses: This was a road game played at 2,840 yards altitude in Bogota on a rain-soaked field.

But these are not factors that would have worried Brazil in the past. For Brazil to play defensively — as it so clearly did — and to be satisfied with the tie, is something new and disturbing in soccer.

The Argentine newspaper Ole — admittedly always critical of Brazilian soccer — judged Brazil’s performance a “fiasco.”

Brazil’s negativity was highlighted by the fact that the team’s most outstanding player was its goalkeeper, Julio Cesar. His totally defensive performance was further underlined when he was cautioned for time wasting — in the first half.

Brazil’s coach, Dunga, having listed all the excuses, pronounced the 0–0 tie “an acceptable start” to the qualifying series.

Tomorrow, Brazil returns home to its cathedral of soccer, the huge Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro, to take on Ecuador. There, the Brazilian fans will surely want something better than acceptable: They will expect the traditional attacking, goal-scoring Brazilian game — a full-out onslaught on Ecuador.

Ecuador is not one of South America’s stronger teams and, on Saturday, it suffered a shock defeat at home to Venezuela. The stage looks set for a Brazilian field day. If there are any doubts about that, they spring from the professed philosophy of Dunga. He has repeatedly let it be known that the famous Brazilian jogo bonito — the Beautiful Game — holds little appeal for him. Winning is what matters, not playing “pretty” soccer. He proved his point earlier this year at the Copa America where Argentina got all the praise for its skillful game, but was crushed 3–0 in the final by Dunga’s more straightforward Brazil. “Efficient” is the key word in Dunga’s tactical vocabulary; for him, it is efficient soccer that is the real jogo bonito. He believes that “the teams that play expansive football never beat efficient teams.”

The point of reference for Brazilian soccer is always its 1970 World Cup-winning team, led by Pele. For many, this was the greatest team ever, and it simply swept opponents aside with its irresistible attacking play. But is it possible to play that way today, after 37 years, during which time soccer has become a much more defensively-oriented game?

Dunga puts it this way: “We want Brazil to play an attractive game, but there are opponents on the field who don’t want to let Brazil play.”

That is undoubtedly true. But has it not always been true? Brazil’s answer in the past has been based on superior attacking play, not on a retreat into a defensive bunker.

The 0–0 tie in Colombia may have seemed acceptable to Dunga, but Kaka was not satisfied. Kaka who, like Ronaldinho, struggles to have any influence in the defensive-minded Brazil, said after Sunday’s game, “I’m not satisfied with the result. A tie is never a good result for Brazil.” Particularly, one might add, a tie in which Brazil failed to score. Both Kaka and Ronaldinho are goal scorers. But neither is a center forward, the player who traditionally wears the no. 9 and scores most of the goals.

For the past decade, Brazil has had the luxury of Ronaldo at center forward, one of the all-time greats. But his international career is over, and no replacement has appeared. For Dunga, this is no big deal. His reasoning is worth study, because it embraces both the logic and the fallacies of modern soccer.

Why this fuss about the number 9, asks Dunga? In the early 1990s, Brazil’s top scorer was the marvelous Romario, and he wore no. 11. The era when the number on a soccer player’s shirt indicated the position he played has gone. Nowadays, the number usually serves to identify the player rather than the position.

But Dunga goes further. He believes that, “in modern soccer everyone has to score. It’s up to whoever is in the penalty area. If you cross the halfway line, you become a forward, and you have to know how to play the ball and have an eye for goal.” That is a splendid theory, closely linked to the total soccer style played by the Netherlands and Germany in the mid-1970s, in which constant interchanging of positions was paramount.

But total soccer is a style that has proved impossible to sustain. It needs not one or two exceptional players, but a whole team of them. Unfortunately, soccer is rather short of exceptional players at the moment.

It is just not true that any player can suddenly become a goal-scoring forward. The razor-sharp, goal-hungry instincts of a Romario or a Ronaldo are not to be found among defenders. The steadily decreasing number of goals in the modern game has much to do with defensive tactics that often maneuver defenders or midfielders into scoring positions, where their skills are simply not up to the task.

The notion that every player can be a forward has its mirror image in the requirement that forwards must do their share of defensive work — something that clearly reduces their effectiveness as goal scorers. In fact, specialist forwards are becoming an endangered species. Many teams now take the field in a tactical formation that includes only a single identifiable forward.

It is unthinkable that Brazil — traditionally a three-forward team — would play with only one attacker. But Dunga’s concept that any player who ventures into the opposing half of the field automatically “becomes a forward” leaves one wondering — especially as, on Sunday, he used only two forwards against Colombia.

pgardner@nysun.com