Sao Paulo, Brazil - Sometimes, usually when he is lazing around the house at the end of the day, Carlos Gamarra has flashbacks. The images are from France 1998 and they hurt almost as much today as they did that day in Lens when Laurent Blanc's header gave the host nation the golden goal they needed to squeeze past Gamarra's Paraguay. No matter how hard he tries, he can't stop them.
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Gamarra tackles England's Darius Vassell at Anfield in 2002. England were 4-0 winners that night.
'When I am at home, lying down, with time to think, those images flash into my mind,' Gamarra said recently, still rueful at the thought of his side's early exit. 'The header appears. The players are there, on the ground crying. Losing that goal in the last minute like that. That marks your career.'
The exit of that Paraguay side was a deep disappointment to Gamarra, one of the finest defenders ever to come from the landlocked South American nation. Failure to win the Copa America on home soil 12 months later only compounded the grief and the poor showing in Japan, where they were knocked out by a lacklustre German side, was another let down in his country's unenviable string of underachievements.
Gamarra, now 34, knows that if he wants to make up for those failures then it has to be in Germany when he leads his country into his third and final World Cup. Leading a squad that is younger and more attack minded than ever, he has no doubts it will be third time lucky.
'There are only three players remaining from the 1998 team, myself, (Jose) Cardozo and (Roberto) Acuna,' Gamarra explained. 'Today we have five, six, seven players who play in Europe and of the rest the majority are playing outside Paraguay. I think we're looking good with players who can play football. It's not the defensive Paraguay who waited for the other team to score before attacking, we know how to take the game to the other side.'
Paraguay were drawn in a tight World Cup group that also features, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, and of course England. Gamarra is confident his team can edge out one of the European sides and make it into the last 16 to face one of the qualifiers from a group containing Costa Rica, Ecuador, Poland and host nation Germany.
This Paraguay side, he said, is more positive than the 1998 and 2002 vintage and the experience of the European-based players, combined with the exuberance that a new generation of youngsters have brought to the side has given his country a dimension it previously lacked.
As one of the over-age players in the team that took silver in the 2004 Olympics, Gamarra played alongside many of those youngsters and he is convinced that if Paraguay can make it out of Group B they will go for broke, if only to avoid suffering the same fate as in the last two tournaments when late goals prevented them from reaching the last eight.
'I think if we can get into the quarter finals then Paraguay is going to make life very difficult for someone,' the former Atletico Madrid and Internazionale defender predicted. 'We'll be confident and if we can pick up confidence then we'll be a whole new team.'
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Gamarra is acrobatic in clearing his lines in the 2004 Olympic final with Argentina.
At present, the experienced defender has more pressing matters to attend to. Back in Brazil after three years with Inter, he is leading Palmeiras in their Copa Libertadores campaign - a goal from Gamarra helped them to a 2-0 win over Venezuelan side Deportivo Tachira in the first leg of the qualifying round last Thursday - and is also hopeful that their good start in the Paulista state championship will bring them the title for the first time since 1996.
The early signs from the Parque Antarctica stadium are promising, with his new team winning their first five matches to top a table that also features Brazilian League Champions Corinthians, Libertadores and World Club Champions Sao Paulo and a new-look Santos headed by former Real Madrid and Brazil manager Vanderlei Luxemburgo.
Buoyed by the return of prodigal son and eternal bad boy Edmundo, and with former Middlesborough and Celtic star Juninho in midfield, Palmeiras are playing well and Gamarra is holding the defence together at the back.
'We've started well, we're winning and I think that we'll get better,' he said shortly before a warm up session at the Sao Paulo club's spacious training ground. 'Our understanding will improve and our physical fitness will too.'
So far it hasn't been easy. A knee injury kept him out of the game for almost seven months and when he regained his fitness he found himself the fifth in line for a starting spot in the middle of the Inter back line. He signed with Palmeiras last summer in order to get playing again and in shape for the World Cup, but even that has had its complications.
Gamarra was previously with Palmeiras's arch rivals Corinthians and he is only now becoming accepted by fans of a side whose rivalry with their city neighbours is so intense it was the subject of a successful feature film.
'It didn't work out for a lot of players who came to Palmeiras after playing for Corinthians because the fans got on their backs,' he acknowledged. 'Thank the Lord (that hasn't happened to me). Normally you sense these things within the first two or three games and I would have felt it already if it was going to happen.'
What he most wants to happen now is to face the future and forget the past. The World Cup will be his swansong. And, he hopes, his salvation.
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