Brazil’s Richarlison scores highlight reel goal in World Cup win

That’s what happened Thursday night, when the goal of this nascent World Cup graced Lusail Stadium two days after the upset of the ages did likewise. Where on Tuesday there had been Saudi Arabia over Argentina, now there came the spectacle on 73 minutes in Brazil over Serbia. It cemented Brazil’s 2-0 opening win. It came from Richarlison, the 25-year-old who has been doing a lot of scoring lately. It made people gasp and maybe even holler involuntarily.

It wreaked a stadium noise that carried the unmistakable sound of wonder and sustained itself longer than most such noises do. It sent Tite, the longtime Brazil manager, into a lovable frenzy as he went up to group-hug his staff, saying later, “Sometimes feelings can’t be explained.” And it lent the postgame concourses the kind of lingering buzz one cannot attain from the nonalcoholic beer they serve in these stadiums here.

“I think it was a beautiful goal,” Richarlison said of his bicycle whirl from amid the box. He mentioned previous and similar goals with the Fluminense club in Brazil and Everton in England and said: “Today I had the opportunity to make an acrobatic goal that was very, very nice, I think one of the nicest in my career. It was a very tough match for us, so I think it was one of the best goals I ever scored.”

He has scored 88 in club play, 19 in international play and two of those 19 on Thursday night, so it’s a mass of goals to assess. “As our professor, Tite, says, ‘You are smelling goal,’ ” Richarlison said. “And that’s what happens.” It brought reward to those who had traveled to the stadium in anticipation of beauty while filling the spotless new metro cars and shiny new metro stations with that old, reliable, electric yellow.

What they saw and surely assessed on the way home in Portuguese and a heap of other languages even managed to overshadow something hard to overshadow. Neymar, Brazil’s most recognizable figure, nowadays 30 and Paris-based, took a bummer of an ankle injury in the second half, played 11 more minutes before his manager realized it, earned his manager’s praise for his pain tolerance and became the subject of a news conference appearance by a team doctor, who said it’s too early to tell much.

“We are confident that Neymar will continue playing,” Tite said. “He will continue playing in the World Cup.” If so, he could help steer Brazil’s bid for a first World Cup title in a yawning 20 years, as well as pursue the record for Brazil goals held by Pele at 77, with Neymar at 75. If not, well, other stars do exist with electric skill in electric yellow, and both goals Thursday did go on merry treks through Vinicius Junior to Richarlison.

That one happened at 62 minutes, when Vinicius Junior, the 22-year-old marvel of energy and precision and Real Madrid employment, corralled a ball of which Neymar had lost track on the left edge of the box and banged it suddenly to the goal, where keeper Vanja Milinkovic-Savic sprawled to save it before Richarlison poked it in easily.

That made it 1-0, and that wasn’t what people will carry in the memory banks.

The unforgettable one came 11 minutes later, and it hinged upon Vinicius Junior’s creation yet again. He operated from the left wing, of course, and this time he slid a seeing-eye ball through a tight corridor of human obstacles. It found its way through to Richarlison amid the box, and then came the whoa.

Richarlison fielded it with his left foot and ticked it airborne. Then he whirled around, twirled his body and bicycled it right-footed. It seared maybe not even an inch over the left shoulder of Serbian defender Milos Velijkovic, as Richarlison’s flying, flailing boot nearly nudged Velijkovic’s head. It kept its screaming line and hurried in just inside the left post, with Milinkovic-Savic as helpless in his late lurch as would have been any of the 8 billion earthlings. For the second time in a brief spell, the entire Brazilian team massed in the corner for a heaving celebration.

“It goes up,” Tite said of the ball, “and he reschedules all his plan,” and what adept plan-reschedulers they are.

The starriest of the World Cup star teams, Brazil, finally had debuted at this 22nd men’s World Cup, the 22nd for which Brazil has qualified. It had become the last of the bigwigs to start in this World Cup of the odd positioning on the calendar. Its fans from around the world, abundant times abundant, had arrived with their singsong loudness in the usual outpouring of can’t-wait. With a few Serbians in red and blue mixed in, they had emptied out toward Lusail Stadium, the…