Every four years, global insanity attacks mainly the male gender, as they abandon their wives and families and dedicate themselves to televised World Cup football games, leading up to the crescendo - the lose-and-out rounds from which one single national team emerges as world champion. (As former Liverpool manager, Bill Shankley once said, "I disagree with those who say football is a matter of life or death. It's much more important than that").  

The latest episode is underway in Germany. Brazil is favored to win.

Brazil's star player is an attacking midfielder known as Ronaldo de Assis Moreira, better known to the world as Ronaldinho. Only 26 years old, he has already been chosen the world's greatest player twice. 

What can managers learn from this remarkable young man, and from the outstanding Brazilian team, five-time world champions - the latest, in 2002? Here are a few lessons. 

Culture is vital 'glue'. "We left Brazil young," Ronaldinho notes, referring to the group of Brazilians who star in European football. "But we were in Brazil until we were 15, we all served the same apprenticeship, and when we meet in the national team, there is an ease of understanding." Tostao, who played on Brazil's championship 1970 team that featured legendary Pele, says England star David Beckham has equal skill to the Brazilians, but - "he cannot tap into the imaginative unconscious of Brazilian football, transmitted down from one generation to the next."  

During TIM's benchmarking trip to Silicon Valley, we heard from many companies how crucial culture is. "Build your company culture from the start," we were told. "You have one opportunity when you set up your company," former 3Com and Palm CEO Eric Benhamou told us. "Do it right". It will not happen by default.  

Brazilian soccer is highly creative. "In Brazil, methods exist in order to be dismantled," says a top commentator. This culture is what glues the stars together into a smooth-passing team. Other teams have equal skill. But they seem to lack that spark of creativity, part of Brazil's culture. In Brazil, children, adults, grandparents, everyone, everywhere plays football, often with improvised balls (like soda cans). Love of the game is part of the national team's DNA. And it shows.   

Imagine success. "When I train," Ronaldinho says, "I create a mental picture of how best to deliver a ball to a teammate. What I do, always, every night and day, is try and think up things, imagine plays, that no-one else thought of, and to do so always bearing in mind the strengths of each teammate to whom I am passing the ball. That's my job. I imagine the game." Vision, it is said, is a mental photograph of the future. Ronaldinho dreams up such visions. Then, on the pitch, he does them. If he did not imagine them first, I doubt that he could do them. 

Merge discipline with creativity, in just the right proportion. Innovation is like a martini - they both contain just the right proportions (vermouth and gin, for a martini; discipline and chaos, for innovation). "It's a myth," says Tostao, "that Brazilian players are so naturally gifted no sweat or discipline is required. We play as disciplined a game as anyone else. We prepare for a game a lot more than people imagine." The difference is that Brazilian players know when to maintain field discipline, and when they can suddenly change positions, improvise, and innovate another amazing goal. 

Teamwork is everything.  Make no mistake. Ronaldinho is a team player. Ronaldinho knocked a strong Milan team out of the Champions League, not with a goal, but with a magical assist (pass). He led his team Barcelona to the championship not only with goals but also with great passes. Ronaldinho says that he takes into account whether his teammate likes the ball at his feet or ahead of him, if he's good with his head, how he prefers to head the ball, if he's stronger with the left or right foot. 

It is all about having fun, not just about making money. Often it seems that global football and its star players care only about money, business, revenue, and bottom-line thinking. Players skip from team to team, depending on who writes bigger checks. Ronaldinho plays with joy, a permanent smile on his face. He plays like a 10-year-old on a back lot. He is modest. And after every goal, he points to the heavens, and says silently, "For you, Dad!" (His father died when he had a heart attack in a swimming pool and drowned; Ronaldinho was only 8 years old). Money, for him, is not the strongest motivator. This seems true for many of Brazil's players. Teams with players that love playing, that play with joie de vivre, are a joy to watch - and they tend to win.   

"Beware of the alienation syndrome," Benhamou told us in Silicon Valley. Managers who are not having fun, who have no time for reflection about what they are doing, who schedule 100% of their time every single day, will quickly become alienated from their mission. So beware of this.  

The World Cup 2006 is not only a contest among national teams. It is a culture war, between the dull grinding defensive system of European football (epitomized by Germany and England) and the loose magically-inventive Brazilian/South American style. 

I doubt Brazil will win the World Cup. Winning seven straight games against fierce competition is daunting. But even if they lose, it will be a joy to watch them along the way. And as a management professor, I will learn new things from Brazil and from Ronaldinho, every moment.