Brazil, the Brazilian national teamthe Yellow greentransits a crisis terminal. It is like if the Amazon were left without trees or the sea swallowed the beaches of Copacabana. One day after the coach was fired Fernando Diniz died Mario Zagallo. At 92 years old the old man left Lobo. If he were alive, they would surely have used him to get out of the disaster. But Lobo he died. AND The hole he leaves in that green and yellow shirt is directly proportional to his legacy..
The facts about his sporting life are known even to beginners, and if not, Wikipedia, despite its inaccuracies, solves it in a jiffy. The thing does not happen there but rather by measuring the importance that Zagallo had in Brazilian football (and perhaps in culture)perhaps at the height of myths like Skin o Garrincha. It’s that simple. Brazil lost its permanent heroto the consulting man, the one who always went out to put out fires like the ones these days.
When the CBF kicked out Joao Saldanha He called the Lobo who already had medals from the 1958 Sweden and 1962 World Cups in Chile as a player. Zagallo received an unmatched but dismembered generation. As it says César Luis Menotti, put the toilet in the bathroom and the sofa in the living room, in the simplest way. He let the players figure it out. This is how Brazil in the 70s was born, the Beatles of football at the time.. He had been a player for América, Flamengo and Botafogo until his retirement in 1965 and the following year he began managing the team of the Lonely Star.
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He was 92 years old and participated in four of the five championships that Verdeamarela won in its history.
In those years, the National Team suffered chaos after the early elimination of the World Cup in England where Pelé miraculously emerged alive due to the massacre to which the Portuguese subjected him. Zagallo was interim between 1967 and 1968, Saldanha took over butThe old journalist, in the midst of the dictatorship, struggled with the shame of his communist faith, the envy of his colleagues, the mistreatment of the leaders and the hatred of Pelé.whom he had relegated to the substitute in a friendly against Bulgaria and sat him on the bench with the number 13 on his shirt.
It was almost time to go to Mexico and Joao Havelangewho had not yet reached FIFA, fired him. Come, Lobo. There were three months left before going to the World Cup and another friendly, this time with Austria, would be the torcedores’ farewell.
In a room at the Hotel das Palmeiras there was a meeting. The versions here take two paths. One that Skin, Gerson y Clodoaldo They took the reins and decided that Tostao, Jairzinho y Rivelino They should be starters. Another is that Zagallo, aware of the internal divisions, proposed that meeting alone with his players to form a group, forget fights and commit to the goal of going to win the World Cup.
Anyway, The three “chiefs” of the National Team communicated their opinion to Zagallo. To the Lobo It didn’t seem bad to him and he drew the system they would use. It was audacity. Pelé was the number 10 for Santos, Rivelino for Corinthians, Tostao for Cruzeiro and Gerson for San Pablo, where he had arrived after participating in the glorious era of Botafogo (1963-69) sharing a team with Zagallo himself, two glories like Didi y Garrincha and a young man Jairzinhoa natural 10 that, given the abundance of quality, had to be used as a right winger.
He Lobo left the traditional four-man defense: Félix to the arch; Charles Albert, Piazza, Brito y Everaldo o Mark Antony. He made what today would be a double pivot with Clodoaldo y Gerson, the man who knew everything, on and off the court. He opened to Jairzinho to the right now Rivelino on the other side and you never knew who the leading striker was, Tostao o Skin. There were no fixed positions, but occupation of the spaces.
The mobility and immense quality of those five men plus the starting play of Clodoaldo (a Busquets or a Rodri of today) gave Brazil exclusive ownership of the ball. You already know how that story ended. There were more titles such as technician or technical assistant. But In Mexico he painted his Mona Lisa, and wrote his Ninth Symphony.. In Mexico he devoured Little Red Riding Hood. Now, Lobo no this.