Mário Zagallo, who died at the age of 92, became the most successful football player in the history of the World Cup. Many more talented players and more tactically astute managers have won the tournament, but none can equal Brazil’s record of four wins: two as a player in 1958 and 1962, one as a coach and the other as an assistant in 1970. His team’s star, Ronaldo, looked destined to win his fifth World Cup, also as Brazil’s coach, in 1998, until he suffered a seizure on the morning of the final, damaging the team’s morale.
Zagallo also became the first of three men (Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer and France’s Didier Deschamps followed him) to win the tournament as both player and coach; and won the cup in 1958 and 1970 with two teams considered the best to win the cup. But in his own country he never received the full recognition his achievements deserved. His fiery temper and harsh, sarcastic tone at a time when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship may have something to do with this; as did his public persona in later years, when he became a cantankerous, almost comical figure. Many Brazilians know him for his famous reply to those who criticized him for his sporting achievements, “you’ll have to put up with me.”
Zagallo’s success as a player was based on hard work and perseverance rather than the skill and free enthusiasm that Brazilian football fans cherish. It was these qualities that earned him a place in the 1958 team. As a young player of Rio de Janeiro club América, he played the most important role in attack, number 10, but when he realized that he would never be successful due to the number of talented forwards Brazil produced, he changed positions and took the 10th place. left wing where he would face less competition for a place in the national side.
He was nicknamed formiguinhaBecause of his surprising stamina, the little ant has developed a new style that he calls “double function”: he plays as a traditional winger when the team is attacking, and when he loses the ball he drops back defensively, creating an extra man. in midfield.
It can be debated whether Zagallo’s double function was the modern midfielder’s original plan, as he sometimes claimed, but it certainly helped Brazil win the World Cup for the first time. The 1958 team was embarrassed by its bright, mercurial players, including Garrincha, Didi, Vavá and the 17-year-old Pelé, but the hard-working, tactically astute left winger was just as important: in the final he cleared the ball for the hosts Sweden to win 2-0. He scored one of Brazil’s goals in their thrilling 5–2 win after coming out of his own line to prevent them from taking the lead.
In 1962, Brazil retained the trophy in Chile, beating Czechoslovakia 3-1 in the final. Zagallo once again played in every match of the tournament in his tireless role on the left; In fact, he played even deeper than in 1958. Zagallo’s disciplined play was the perfect complement to Garrincha on the right wing, an extremely talented, free-spirited footballer independent of team tactics, who became Brazil’s match-winner after Pelé’s injury. second game.
Zagallo was born in the city of Maceió on Brazil’s northeastern coast to Maria Antonieta Lobo and Haroldo Zagallo. The family moved to Rio when he was a baby. He spent his senior playing career at Rio’s two biggest clubs: Flamengo from 1950 to 1958 and then Botafogo until he retired as a player in 1965 after winning the last of his 33 international caps. A year later he became manager of Botafago and achieved instant success, winning two state championships and one national championship with the club in the late 1960s.
However, his recruitment to the national team in 1970 was sudden and unexpected. Just three months before the tournament started in Mexico, maverick coach João Saldanha, who had guided Brazil through the knockout stages, was fired after a series of impetuous, paranoid outbursts.
Zagallo was third choice, replacing Saldanha, but after his appointment he stamped his authority on the squad and instilled steel and tactical discipline. He was savvy enough not to stifle the attacking instincts of the team’s talented, world-class attack: the now experienced Pelé, who had played under the young coach in the previous two World Cups, was joined by Gérson, Tostão, Rivellino and Jairzinho. .
They won the 1970 tournament with grace, swagger and joie de vivre. In 2013, Zagallo told me that this achievement marked the pinnacle of his career. The usual seriousness on his face disappeared for a moment and he beamed with pride: “To lead my country to victory in the World Cup and to play the football we do… It was a great honour, a great privilege.”
Four years later, Zagallo was still in charge in West Germany, but the team was a shadow of their 1970 incarnation. He begged Pelé, now 33, to take part in one more tournament, but the player told him that he could make much more money as Pepsi’s football ambassador than he could from the game; other players had retired or been injured, and although Rivellino and Jairzinho were still playing, Brazil were uncharacteristically cynical. They prevailed over the Netherlands in the semi-final match. However, Brazil finished the tournament in fourth place.
Over the next 16 years, Zagallo bounced between managing clubs in Rio, including three more stints at Botafogo, and lucrative jobs in the Middle East, taking charge of Saudi club side Al-Hilal and the Kuwait, Saudi Arabian national teams. and UAE. He led the UAE to World Cup qualification for the first time in the country’s history, but resigned before the 1990 finals in Italy over a contractual dispute and became Brazil assistant manager a year later under his friend and former apprentice Carlos Alberto Parreira. After a 24-year wait, the duo led their country to World Cup glory in 1994, albeit with a more defensive and masterful attitude than the former Brazilian champions.
When Parreira resigned after the tournament, Zagallo took over as Brazil manager for the second time and guided the team, led by seemingly unstoppable centre-forward Ronaldo, to the 1998 World Cup final against hosts France. Brazil were favorites but on the morning of the final Ronaldo suffered a mysterious convulsion, was sent to hospital for tests and was excluded from the starting 11; but he arrived at the stadium just before kick-off and demanded to play.
Zagallo was in the impossible position of deciding whether Ronaldo should come on the field. If it had been any other player, the decision would have been simple, but Brazil’s hoped-for player of the tournament was Ronaldo. So Zagallo chose him. However, Ronaldo, and indeed the entire team, were so shaken by the day’s events that the final was one of the most one-sided finals in history, and France won 3-0.
Parreira and Zagallo met once again as Brazil’s manager and assistant at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, but it was an unhappy reunion and the aging team was eliminated by France in the quarter-finals. This was Zagallo’s seventh World Cup in half a century and the only one in which he failed to reach at least the last four of the tournament.
FIFA appointed Zagallo as its World Cup ambassador in preparation for the 2014 tournament, which will be held in Brazil for the first time in 64 years. “I was a soldier [on duty] I was promoted to ambassador at the 1950 World Cup and today. “This is a huge leap,” he said, but he was hospitalized two weeks before the tournament with an infection in his spine.
He married Alcina de Castro in 1955. He had two sons and two daughters and died in 2012.
• Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo, football player and coach, born 9 August 1931; died January 5, 2024