Inverting The Pyramid Deconstructed: Part V — Bringing The Carnival, The History Of Brazilian Football
This is a continuation from part IV…..
If myth and folklore of the beginnings of Brazilian football are to be believed, the game in Brazil began because of a certain Charles Miller.
Miller was born of mixed lineage, an English father and a Brazilian mother, who were members of the coffee & commerce elite of Sao Paulo in the late 19th century. He was sent back to England for his education where he learnt the game and went on to represent Hampshire and played a handful of games for St.Mary’s, the forerunner of Southampton.
According to legend, he returned to Sao Paulo in 1894 disembarking from the ship with two footballs in his hands. The story suggests that Miller’s father was surprised as to what the balls in his hands were and asked his son, “What are those Charles?” to which the young Miller replied, “My degree. Your son has graduated in football.”
As Jonathan Wilson writes, the specifics of the story are certainly untrue. But you can expect Brazilian historians to add their bit of flavour.
The game spread quickly and by 1902, Sao Paulo had a thriving league.
Football also spread in Rio de Janeiro because of another Anglo-Brazilian named Oscar Cox who learnt the game during his schooling in Switzerland.
Along with his friends, Cox founded Fluminense; but it was a team of Scottish expats called the Scottish Wanderers, a team formed in Sao Paulo in 1912 that began to propagate the Scottish style of play(covered in part I) which the locals in Brazil termed as ‘systema ingleza’ — The English system.
A pair of Scottish players from the Scottish Wanderers team migrated to Sao Bento where their rapid exchange of short passes would be adopted as ‘tabelinha’ — literally ‘the little chart’.
However, the real divergence from the model taught by their English predecessors, took a sharp turn when the locals got involved.
Barred from Fluminense, the Brazilian locals watched the Anglo-Brazilians from the rooftops with curiosity and saw a game that was far easier to comprehend and play than cricket. In the earliest kickabouts on the streets of Brazil, an entirely different game was being conceptualized, using balls made out of rags, and more predominantly where unorthodox and individual skills were prized over tactical discipline and physicality.
Anthropologist Robert DaMatta called this divergence and way of circumventing the law, which all Brazilians often did, ‘jeitinho’ — literally, ‘the small way’ to describe the blatant disregard of laws and the individual creativity Brazilians pride themselves on, which he wrote about in his book ‘What makes Brazil. Brazil?’
It was clear to all the expats and Anglo elite that Brazilian football was a new rendition of the beautiful game where Brazilian’s prided and focused more on self-expression than team play.
The Fledgling Years Of Brazilian Football
Football in Brazil was nowhere near as developed as it was across the River Plate in Uruguay and Argentina(covered in part II).
Brazil’s first ten internationals all against Argentina, Uruguay or Chile yielded just three victories and in the 1917 Copa America they conceded four goals against both Argentina and Uruguay.
But they tasted success for the first time in 1919 winning the Copa America largely because they used the ploy of playing one of their full-backs in a purely defensive role, while the full-back on the other side was given license to join the attack. The victory and the tactical tweak made the Brazil national team realize for the first time that they needed some sort of structure to their defence and the need of tactics.
However, this was far from the start of any continental domination. Brazil won just six of the twenty matches they played against Argentina before 1940 and just five of their thirteen against Uruguay.
They won the Copa America again in 1922, but it wouldn’t be until 1949 till they won it for the third time.
At the 1930 World Cup, Brazil lost their opening game 2–1 against Yugoslavia
and were eliminated despite a subsequent 4–0 victory over Bolivia.
Brazil were “individually cleverer but collectively inferior,” wrote Brian Glanville.
Professionalism was finally sanctioned in Brazil by 1933 and in the 1934 World Cup they were eliminated after a 3–1 defeat to Spain.
Early Pioneers Of The W-M In Brazil & Its Modification To The Diagonal
The first attempt to bring the W-M instilled by Herbert Chapman(covered in part III) to Brazil was made by Gentil Cardoso.
Cardoso was black and spent his days working as a bootblack, a waiter, a tram driver and a baker before joining the merchant navy. That entailed frequent travels to Europe by sea, and it seemed that he spent most of his free time watching football. He claimed to have watched Chapman’s initiation of the W-M at Arsenal first hand on his travels to England.
Cardoso saw the W-M and it’s possibilities and realized that it was vastly different from the formations in practice in Brazil, and, recognized that it was the future.
Cardoso was given the chance to coach in the 1930s and managed the clubs Sirio Libanes and Bonsucesso where he saw the emergence of the first hero of Brazilian football Leonidas.
Leonidas was as written by playwright Nelson Rodrigues, ‘a thoroughly Brazilian player. Full of fantasy, improvisation, childishness and sensuality that have marked out all the Brazilian greats’
However, Cardoso wasn’t taken very seriously and didn’t have the chance to implant the W-M firmly in Brazil during his career.
It took another European named Dori Kurschner to integrate the W-M fully in Brazil, although he died before his ideas really took hold.
Flavio Costa, Kurschner’s successor at Flamengo stated in an interview, ‘(Cardoso) never had the prestige to apply it(the W-M). Kurschner was the one who tried to apply futebol sistema’.
Kurschner was appointed as an advisor to national team coach Adhemar Pimenta for the 1938 World Cup in France and aided in the tactical tweak of playing an attacking centre-half in Martim Silveria and dropping the two inside forwards Romeu and Jose Peracio in a withdrawn role which would go on to be named as ‘ponta da lanca’ — the point of the lance.
However, as fate would have it, Kurshner would become a mythical figure in Brazilian football history without much known about him: A prophet of the game in Brazil appearing from nowhere and lost in the history books after dying of a mysterious virus in 1941.
The formation used by Brazil at the 1938 World Cup wasn’t far from the 2–3–5 implemented by Vittorio Pozzo’s Italy(covered in part IV).
Back in Brazil, Flavio Costa would tweak the W-M using his own tactics of implementing what he termed as the ‘diagonal’, nudging players slightly in front and back creating a parallelogram.
That was, (as shown in the figure below) comprising three defenders(Bigua, Domingos & Newton) and three forwards(Valido, Pirilo & Veve) and the right- half (Volante) slightly forward with a more forward player to his left(Jayme) and the inside forwards (Zizinho) dropping slightly deeper into midfield so as to not leave much space behind him, and the left inside forward (Peracio) slightly forward in the classic ‘ponta da lanca’ position.
Using the ‘diagonal’, and a slight modification to it, Brazil swept to victory in the 1949 Copa America scoring thirty-nine goals in seven matches before demolishing Paraguay 7–0 in the final.
The 1950 World Cup & Agony For Brazil
By the 1950 World Cup, hosted by Brazil, the ‘diagonal’ had undergone a slight change with the center-halfs playing slightly forward and the inside forwards withdrawn slightly deeper to form a square in the center of midfield(as shown in the picture below).
Brazil were considered favourites on home soil but Zizinho, their talisman, was injured for the start of the tournament. However, Brazil had center forward Ademir and lived up to their billing thrashing Mexico 4–0 hitting the post five times in the inaugural game at the Maracana.
Brazil drew to Switzerland and narrowly beat Yugoslavia to qualify for the final group stage with fit again Zizinho sealing the winner against the Yugoslavs.
In the final group stage, Brazil were sensational. They hammered Sweden 7–1 and Spain 6–1, as Glanville wrote of them playing ‘the football of the future…. tactically unexceptional but technically superb’.
That meant all Brazil needed was a draw against Uruguay to win the World Cup on home turf.
The Brazilian media expected nothing other than victory and already began publishing articles like in the publication O Mundo where a picture of the Brazilian team was printed with the tagline ‘These are the world champions’, while the Brazilian state governor also delivered a speech stating, “I consider you as victors of the tournament” and “I already salute you as conquerors”.
Shockingly, in the final against Uruguay, who were playing a 1–3–3–3, Brazil lost 2–1 to late goals and as recounted, the Maracana which had nearly 200,000 spectators in attendance was stunned into ‘silence’ and so the game became, as it would be remembered in Brazilian history, their ‘Hiroshima’.
The 4–2–4, The 1954 World Cup And Redemption in 1958 and 1962
Four years later, at the 1954 World Cup, Brazil beat Mexico in the opener, drew to Yugoslavia and then crashed out in the quarter-final in a vicious game against Hungary, losing 4–2 in what was dubbed as ‘The Battle Of Berne’.
Garrincha emerged as Brazil’s new superstar and as he complained, Brazil went to Europe ‘burying the individual for a general team plan’ and tried to ‘play like Europeans’ rather than sticking to their ‘ability to improvise’.
Just who invented the 4–2–4 is a matter of debate, and according to history it has many fathers, however, Manuel Fleitas Solich a Paraguayan coach won three Carioca titles in a row using it at Flamengo between 1953 and 1955.
He used the tactic of pushing his left-half back to play as the ‘quarto zagueiro’ — the fourth defender.
In practice, the 4–2–4 never stuck to the same shape. It became a 3–3–4 out of posession and 4–3–3 with the ball.
It had two further and important modifications. The first— A crucial tactical switch was the change of the marking system from a man-to-man marking system deployed in the W-M to a zonal system in the 4–2–4.
A four-man backline meant the use of full-backs, which would become an increasingly important part of the Brazilian game, which is why Brazil keep producing great wing-backs. Given the space in front of the full-backs, the 4–2–4 encouraged them to advance and attack.
The second was the re-introduction of the ponta da lanca, which wasn’t new in Brazilian football but ensured one of the two forwards would drop back into midfield, becoming the link between midfield and attack.
The 4–2–4 soon became widely adopted in Brazil.
Pele was sixteen when Lula, manager of Santos, gave the teenager his debut. And within a year, he would inspire Brazil at the 1958 World Cup.
At the ’58 World Cup, Garrincha and Pele would emerge as the stars for the Brazilians.
Brazil beat Austria 3–0 in the opener, however, this was without the injured Pele and out of favour Garrincha, the latter of whom was benched for excessive showboating in the warmup of a practice match against Fiorentina.
Brazil then drew 0–0 to England again without Pele or Garrincha and with Vava hitting the bar, England’s Clamp clearing off the line and England goalkeeper Colin McDonald producing two fine saves to deny Jose Altafini(called Mazzola).
Garrincha and Pele were re-instated into the lineup with Brazil coach Vincente Feola instructing midfielder Didi, ‘the first pass goes to Garrincha’.
This time Brazil wouldn’t be denied. They won 2–0 against the USSR and 1–0 against Wales in the quarters, as Brazil progressed into the semis only to romp to a 5–2 victory against France in the semi-finals and again winning 5–2 against Sweden in the final.
As Brian Glanville recounted, ‘There was no doubt this time’, that the ‘best and immeasurably the finest team had won’
Garrincha also dazzled in the next immediate World Cup in 1962 with Pele injured as Brazil destroyed all before them as Garrincha netted against twice against England in the quarters and twice again in a 4–2 win over Chile in the semis before being red carded and reprieved for the final.
However, he wasn’t needed as Brazil went on to win against Czechoslovakia 3–1 in the final with goals from Amarildo, Zito, and Vava.
The triumphs of ’58 and ’62 firmly established Brazil as one of the greatest teams in the world.
The Brazilian Way
A piece in the A Gazeta in 1949 written by a journalist named Mazzoni wrote:
“For the Englishman, football is an athletic exercise; for the Brazilian it’s a game.
The Englishman considers a player that dribbles three times in succession a nuisance; the Brazilian considers him a virtuoso.
English football, well played is like a symphonic orchestra; well played, Brazilian football is like an extremely hot jazz band.
English football requires that the ball moves faster than the player; Brazilian football requires that the player be faster than the ball
The English player thinks; the Brazilian improvises.”
— Mazzoni for ‘A Gazeta’
And so the Brazilian way became likened to the ‘Samba’ and shouting the words “Samba, Samba” became a popular chant by Brazilian fans during international games in those years.
This wild, irregular, and improvised way of football became the ethos of Brazil much ingrained into their culture by the roots of ‘jeitinho’, and the beautiful game soon became the most loved game at heart of the South American nation for the rest of time.
To be continued in part VI…..
Here are the other parts to this series:
