Mario Jorge Lobo Zagallo (1931–2024)

The only four-time football champion

When I was little more than a teenager at the 1970 World Cup, I had no sympathy for Zagallo.

Under the influence of General Médici, he had “cut” striker Toninho, Santos Futebol Clube center forward, the only player to be five-times champion of the São Paulo State championship in a sequence of 5 consecutive years and my favorite to be the center forward of National team alongside Pelé. He had replaced João Saldanha, the coach who was the one who recovered the Brazilian team after the failure of 1966 with the concept that the team needed 11 “wild people”, the Wilds of Saldanha.

More than 50 years after The Brazilian third championship, I have to reconsider, Zagallo was great, really huge!

No one will have a performance like his in the world of football, four-time world champion, twice as a player, once as a coach and once as technical coordinator of the national team.

He represents an age where rooting for the national team was a vibration that only those who heard Miguel Gustavo’s song — Para Frente Brasil (90 million in action) can know, (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls= en&q=90+mil%C3%B5es+em+ac%C3%A3o+mudica&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:549de2f3,vid:gMh7hXWIEtE,st:0).

It was an age where the national team’s shirt had not been tarnished by politics and each of us knew our perfect lineup and we knew all the players.

Go in peace Old Wolf