Mario Zagallo: A Brazilian Football Legend Remembered
It is an origin story worthy of a deity.
Mario Zagallo was 18 years old when Brazil played Uruguay in the final game of the 1950 World Cup. He had not, at that stage, signed his first professional football contract, not yet even begun to establish himself as one of his country’s most successful — and beloved — sporting figures.
He was, however, at the Maracana on that momentous Sunday afternoon in July. He wore the olive green of the Brazilian army, his military service having handed him a front-row seat to history. The Selecao were expected to walk the match. Their first-ever World Cup title beckoned.
Instead, Uruguay won.
“Our Hiroshima,” Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues dubbed it — a distasteful image that tried to capture the depth of the despair. Grown men sobbed in the stands. Zagallo, who had spent countless childhood hours kicking a ball around the scrubland upon which the stadium was subsequently built, stood there in his uniform, overcome by sadness.
Patriotism and duty were never mere buzzwords for Zagallo, who repurposed the pain as fuel. Eight years later, he played his first game at international level, embarking on a journey that would help to make Brazil the preeminent power in the game. By the time he stepped away from football, aged 74, he had been involved in four successful World Cup campaigns — a record that will endure for decades to come.
There have been brighter Brazilian stars and plenty of better players. No single person, though, has ever been quite so entwined with the Selecao’s fate as Zagallo. When the eternal Mr World Cup died on Friday night, aged 92, a little slice of Brazil’s national identity departed with him.
It was Zagallo’s humility that first put him on the path to greatness. He played as a No 10 as a youngster, pulling the strings behind the frontline, but decided, after breaking through at Flamengo, that he could not compete with the very best players in that role.
He became a winger. It suited his physique — he was, to use the charming Brazilian phrase, a ‘butterfly filet’, so slight that he had to run around in the rain to get wet — but he interpreted the position differently to his peers. While they saved their energy for flamboyant dribbles, Zagallo made a point of tracking back and helping with the defensive load.
‘Little Ant,’ they called him, perhaps not entirely generously, but his managers loved him. Zagallo helped Flamengo to three successive state championship titles between 1953 and 1955 and was a late bolter for Vicente Feola’s 1958 World Cup squad. When Pepe, one of the side’s stars, was struck down by injury, Zagallo was promoted to the starting XI.
His tactical diligence proved to be a huge boon for Feola, who could rely on him to make up the numbers in midfield when Brazil lost possession. Six games later, Zagallo was a World Cup winner and Brazil had conquered their demons.
In the wake of that tournament, he swapped Flamengo for Botafogo, whose all-star line-up — Zagallo, Garrincha, Nilton Santos, Didi, Amarildo — formed the spine of Brazil’s team for the 1962 World Cup in Chile. Again, the Selecao took home the Jules Rimet trophy. Again, Zagallo started every match.
His legacy would already have been assured at this stage. Every last one of the double World Cup winners from that era is remembered with huge reverence and fondness. Zagallo, though, went to the next level by coaching Brazil to their third World Cup win.
After a successful stint in the Botafogo dugout, he was handed the Brazil job on the eve of the 1970 tournament. It was not the smoothest transition — predecessor Joao Saldanha had been removed from his position after failing to defer to Brazil’s military dictatorship — but Zagallo took it in his stride. It helped that he was on good terms with several key players, most notably Pele, who he had mentored at the 1958 World Cup and who considered him a close ally.
Brazil had been so imperious in qualifying that most believed changing things for the World Cup would be folly. Zagallo, though, had a couple of tweaks in mind. One was to move Piazza to the centre of the defence, opening up a berth for Clodoaldo, a cerebral midfielder. The other was to jam four No 10s — Pele, Tostao, Rivellino, Gerson — and winger Jairzinho into the same side, a plan that looked ludicrous on paper.
Zagallo, though, made it work. Rivellino was moved to the left flank, with freedom to drift inside. Gerson took up a withdrawn role alongside Clodoaldo and ran things from deep. Jairzinho rampaged up and down the right. Pele and the unselfish Tostao played centrally, taking it in turns to drop off and create. It was as much a feat of ego management as it was of tactics, which is to take nothing at all away from Zagallo. That team was his great gift — not just to Brazil, but to football.
That he never quite hit those heights again is hardly surprising. There were, however, further successes: Zagallo was Carlos Alberto Parreira’s right-hand man when Brazil won the 1994 World Cup and led the Selecao to the 1997 Copa America.
That latter title is best remembered not for the football but for a soundbite that neatly underlined another side of Zagallo’s personality. He looked like your gentle uncle, but he could be spiky as hell. After Brazil beat Bolivia in the final, a wild-eyed Zagallo glared down the lens of a television camera and socked it to his critics. His final line — “You’re going to have to put up with me” — immediately entered the Brazilian footballing lexicon.
Whatever anti-Zagallo sentiment there was over the years — for leaving Romario out of Brazil’s 1998 World Cup squad, say, or over his decision to play a clearly out-of-sorts Ronaldo in the final against France — has long since faded. What remains is his legacy, imposing in both its depth and breadth.
Zagallo starred in two brilliant teams, then created an even better one as a coach. Including his two spells as Parreira’s assistant, he played a part in seven World Cup campaigns, four of them successful. Little wonder, then, that his death — a year and a week after Pele’s — has prompted a comparable outpouring of emotion and grief in Brazil.
“He was an ambassador for Brazilian football,” wrote Globo’s Carlos Eduardo Mansur on Saturday. “He had an umbilical relationship with the yellow jersey. No one loved it more.”
“The Selecao was everything to me,” Zagallo said in 2021. If football teams could talk, this one would likely return the compliment.
(Top photo: Getty Images)