  This paper studies near-critical evolution of the spherically symmetric
scalar field configurations close to the continuously self-similar solution.
Using analytic perturbative methods, it is shown that a generic growing
perturbation departs from the critical Roberts solution in a universal way. We
argue that in the course of its evolution, initial continuous self-similarity
of the background is broken into discrete self-similarity with echoing period
$\Delta = \sqrt{2}\pi = 4.44$, reproducing the symmetries of the critical
Choptuik solution.
