Mario Zagallo, who won four world titles with Brazil as a player or coach, including the 1970 World Cup — an edition considered by many to be the best of all time —, died in the early hours of this Saturday, January 6, at the age of 92.
The news was announced on the former footballer’s official Instagram account, in a post in which Zagallo is described as “a devoted father, loving grandfather, affectionate father-in-law, faithful friend, successful professional and a great human being”. “Giant idol. A patriot who leaves us a legacy of great achievements”, says the publication.
Zagallo had been admitted to a hospital in Rio de Janeiro for several days, but the cause of death is not yet known.
Nicknamed “the professor”, he played a fundamental role in four of the “canarinha’s” five world titles. Tough and talented left defender, Zagallo played in the team that won Brazil’s first world title in 1958, a feat he would achieve again four years later.
In 1970, he coached the Brazilian team that included many of the greatest football names of all time, such as Pelé, Jairzinho, Rivellino and Tostão — one that many consider to be the greatest national team on the field, which would go on to achieve their third World Cup victory. to Brazil, Mexico. This achievement made Zagallo the first person to win a World Cup as a player and coach.
In total, as a player, he won two trophies: in 1958, in Sweden, and in 1962, in Chile. From the bench, he led the Brazilian team to the title in Mexico in 1970, and was technical coordinator when they won the title in 1994 in the United States.
In addition to the Brazilian, only German Franz Beckenbauer (Germany, in 1974, and Italy, 1990) and Frenchman Didier Deschamps (France, in 1998, and Russia, in 2018) won a World Cup as a player and coach.
“You’re going to have to swallow me”
Zagallo was always much loved by Brazilian fans, who liked his idiosyncratic personality and his unapologetic nationalism. He liked to say that he was born with victory on his side and was rarely shy about challenging those who said his teams were too defensive.
One of the most famous phrases came after Brazil won the Copa América in Bolivia in 1997. When the final whistle sounded, Zagallo, visibly emotional, his face red due to the thin air in La Paz, shouted to the television cameras ” You’re going to have to swallow me”, a phrase that is still used by Brazilians from various clubs to claim victories suffered.
According to him, he says The leafthe phrase targeted two journalists from São Paulo who were campaigning against the coach.
Zagallo was also known to be very superstitious and believed that the number 13 brought him luck. He liked to coin phrases that contained 13 letters, he got married on the 13th and even said that he would leave the fields at 1 pm on July 13, 2013.
Zagallo wanted to be an airline pilot
The man with a thousand names, also known as “Lobo Velho”, was born on August 9, 1931, in Maceió, on the impoverished northeast coast of Brazil. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro before turning one year old and it was in the “Marvelous City” that he grew up and fell in love with football.
Because of vision problems, he was forced to abandon one of his first dreams: to be an airline pilot. He chose to study accounting and, in his free time, played football for the local team, América, at that time one of the biggest clubs in the city.
“My father didn’t want me to be a football player, he didn’t let me,” said Zagallo in an interview published by the Brazilian Football Confederation. “At that time it wasn’t a respected profession, society didn’t look favorably on it… That’s why I say that football came into my life by accident.”
Zagallo started as a central defender wearing the number 10 shirt which, before Pelé, still didn’t have the meaning it has now, but intuition told him he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. “I saw that it would be difficult to get into the Brazilian team with the number 10 shirt because there were a lot of great players in that position, so I moved from left midfield to full back,” he said.
He also moved from América to Flamengo, where he won three medals in the Rio de Janeiro football championship. The second half of his career was spent at municipal rival Botafogo, where he won two more titles.
The first World Cup took place in Sweden, in 1958, where he started all six matches and played alongside Garrincha and Pelé, who at the time was just 17 years old. “I was 27 years old and Pelé was 17. That’s why I say I never played with him, but he played with me.”
Four years later, in Chile, he was champion again, but only secured his place after making some tactical changes. Zagallo stayed behind to help mark the rival full-back and when his team won the ball, he returned to position. It was unusual for strikers to help in defense and the player helped change the way the wingers played.
Mexico, 1970
As a coach, Zagallo led a series of Brazilian clubs, but left his mark when he was called up to replace the controversial João Saldanha as Brazil coach, a few months before the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Brazil’s performance was uneven and the team were not one of the favorites, but Zagallo assembled a star-studded squad and won a memorable 4-1 victory over Italy in the final.
Immortalized with a statue in front of the Nilton Santos stadium, in Rio de Janeiro, he coached the Kuwait national team, between 1976 and 1978, and the United Arab Emirates team, in the years 1989 and 1990. The coach returned to command the national team in 1998 , when Ronaldo’s Brazil lost by three balls to zero at the Stade de France to the Bluesby captain Didier Deschamps.
He married his first and only wife, Alcina de Castro, in 1955, who died in 2012. The couple had four children. Zagallo retired in 2006, but remained very popular and did not disappear from public life, frequently appearing on television, at awards and gala ceremonies and at the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), which decreed seven days of mourning in football Brazilian for the death of Zagallo, “greatest world champion of all time” and “idol of several generations”.
“Greatest world champion of all time, revered and admired by a legion of fans, idol of several generations, Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo died this Friday”, reads the note published on the CBF’s official website.
The entity that governs Brazilian football also announced that a minute of silence will be respected in all games in the first round of the Copa do Nordeste qualifiers, which begins this Saturday.
“The CBF and Brazilian football mourn the death of one of its legends, Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo. The CBF offers solidarity to his family and fans in this moment of sadness at the departure of this idol of our football”, stated the president of the CBF, Ednaldo Rodrigues.
2024-01-06 11:20:45
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