Mário Zagallo, who has died aged 92, was the most successful footballer in the history of the World Cup. Many players who were more talented and managers who were more tactically astute have won the tournament, but none can match the Brazilian’s record of four wins: two as a player, in 1958 and 1962, one as a manager, in 1970, and a others as an assistant. manager, in 1994. He seemed destined to win a fifth World Cup in 1998, again as manager of Brazil, before Ronaldo, his team’s star, suffered a seizure on the morning of the final, destroying the team’s morale .
Zagallo was also the first of only three men (Germany Franz Beckenbauer and France’s Didier Deschamps followed him) to win the tournament as both a player and manager; and he won with the two teams, of 1958 and 1970, that are widely regarded as the best ever to win the trophy. Yet he never received the full recognition his achievements deserved in his home country. His fiery temper and brusque, regimental appearance at a time when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship may have something to do with that, as did his public persona in later years, when he became a grumpy, almost comic figure. Many Brazilians know him more for the response he growled at his critics – “you’ll have to put up with me” – and for his sporting achievements.
Zagallo’s success as a player was based on hard work and perseverance rather than the skill and free-flowing exuberance cherished by Brazilian football fans. It was these characteristics that earned him a place in the 1958 team. As a youth player for Rio de Janeiro club América, he had played at number 10, the crucial attacking role, but realizing he would never be successful due to the glut of talented attackers Brazil produced, he switched positions and moved to the left, where he would face less competition for a place in the national team.
He got the nickname Formiguinhathe little ant, because of his astonishing endurance, and developed a new style, which he called his ‘double role’: playing as a conventional winger when the team attacked and dropping back to defend when they lost the ball, creating an extra man. in midfield.
Whether Zagallo’s double role was the original blueprint for the modern midfielder, as he sometimes claimed, is open to question, but it certainly helped Brazil win the World Cup for the first time. The 1958 team was embarrassed by brilliant, mercurial players including Garrincha, Didí, Vavá and 17-year-old Pelé, but the hard-working, tactically astute left winger was just as important, clearing the ball in the final. outside his own line to prevent hosts Sweden from taking a 2–0 lead, and he scored one of Brazil’s goals in their thrilling 5–2 victory.
In 1962, Brazil retained the trophy in Chile, beating Czechoslovakia 3–1 in the final. Zagallo again featured in every match of the tournament, in his tireless role on the left; he played even deeper than in 1958. Zagallo’s disciplined play was the perfect complement to Garrincha on the right wing, an immensely gifted, free-spirited footballer unfettered by team tactics and who became Brazil’s match-winner after Pelé was injured in the match. second game.
Zagallo was born in the city of Maceió on the northeast coast of Brazil to Maria Antonieta Lobo and Haroldo Zagallo. The family moved to Rio when he was a baby. He spent his senior playing career at two of Rio’s biggest clubs: Flamengo, from 1950 to 1958, and then Botafogo until he retired as a player in 1965, having won the last of his 33 caps. A year later he became manager of Botafago and was an immediate success. In the late 1960s he won two state titles and one national title with the club.
Yet his call to lead the national team in 1970 was sudden and unexpected. Just three months before the tournament kicked off in Mexico, João Saldanha, the maverick manager who had led Brazil through the qualifying stages, was sacked after a series of rash, paranoid outbursts.
Zagallo was the third choice to replace Saldanha, but once appointed he reasserted his authority in the squad and instilled steel and tactical discipline. He was perceptive enough not to stifle the attacking instincts of the team’s gifted, world-class attack: Pelé, who had played alongside the young manager in two previous World Cups and was now a veteran, was joined by Gérson, Tostão, Rivellino and Jairzinho. .
They won the 1970 tournament with grace, swagger and zest for life. In 2013, Zagallo told me that this success had marked the pinnacle of his career. For a moment, the usual seriousness disappeared from his face and he beamed with pride: “Leading my country to victory in the World Cup, and playing the football we did… That was such an honor, such a privilege.”
Four years later, in West Germany, Zagallo was still in charge, but the team was a shadow of their 1970 incarnation. He had begged Pelé, now 33, to play another tournament with him, but the player told him that he could make much more money as a football ambassador for Pepsi than from the game itself; other players had retired or been injured, and although Rivellino and Jairzinho were still playing, Brazil were unusually cynical. In a match that was actually the semi-final, they were outclassed by the Netherlands. Nevertheless, Brazil finished the tournament in fourth place.
For the next sixteen years, Zagallo moved back and forth between managing clubs in Rio, including three more spells at Botafogo, and lucrative jobs in the Middle East, taking charge of Saudi club Al-Hilal and the national teams of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. and the UAE. He led the UAE to World Cup qualification for the only time in the country’s history, but resigned before the 1990 final in Italy due to a contractual dispute, becoming assistant manager of Brazil a year later under his friend and former pupil Carlos Alberto Parreira. After a 24-year wait, the pair led their country to World Cup victory in 1994, albeit in a more defensive, professional manner than former Brazilian champions.
When Parreira resigned after the tournament, Zagallo took over as Brazil manager for a second time and guided the team, led by the seemingly unstoppable striker 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 dropped from the starting eleven, but appeared at the stadium just before kick-off and demanded to play.
Zagallo found themselves in the impossible position of deciding whether Ronaldo should appear or not. If it had been any other player the decision would have been easy, but Ronaldo was the player of the tournament on whom Brazil’s hopes rested. So Zagallo chose him. However, Ronaldo and indeed the entire team were so traumatized by the day’s events that the final was one of the most one-sided in history and France won 3–0.
Parreira and Zagallo were reunited as Brazil manager and assistant for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, but it was an unhappy reunion and the aging team were knocked out by France in the quarter-finals. That 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 competition.
Ahead of the 2014 tournament, the first time it had been held in Brazil in 64 years, FIFA appointed Zagallo as World Cup ambassador. “I was a soldier [on duty] at the 1950 World Cup and today I have been promoted to ambassador. It’s a very big jump,” he said, even though he was hospitalized with an infection in his spine two weeks before the tournament.
In 1955 he married Alcina de Castro. They had two sons and two daughters, and she died in 2012.
• Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo, footballer and manager, born August 9, 1931; died January 5, 2024