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 equal the Brazilian’s record of four triumphs: two as a player, in 1958 and 1962, one as manager, in 1970, and another as assistant manager, in 1994. He looked destined to win a fifth World Cup in 1998, again as Brazil’s manager, before Ronaldo, the star of his team, suffered a seizure on the morning of the final, shattering the team’s morale.
Zagallo was also the first of only three men (Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer and France’s Didier Deschamps followed him) to win the tournament both as a player and as a manager; and he won with the two teams, of 1958 and 1970, that are widely regarded as the best ever to land the trophy. Yet in his home country he never received the full recognition that his achievements merited. His fiery temper and brusque, regimental air at a time when the country was run by a military dictatorship may have had something to do with that, as did his public persona in later years, when he became a cranky, almost comedic figure. Many Brazilians know him more for the riposte he famously growled at his critics – “you will have to put up with me” – as his sporting achievements.
Zagallo’s success as a player was built 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 the Rio de Janeiro club América, he had played at No 10, the pivotal attacking role, but, realising he would never be successful because of the abundance of talented forwards Brazil produced, he switched positions and moved to the left-wing, where he would face less competition for a place in the national side.
He was nicknamed Formiguinha, the little ant, because of his amazing stamina, and developed a new style, which he called his “double function” – playing as a conventional winger when the team attacked and dropping back to defend when they lost possession, thereby creating an extra man in midfield.
Whether Zagallo’s double function was the original blueprint for the modern midfielder, as he sometimes claimed, is debatable, but it certainly helped Brazil win the World Cup for the first time. The 1958 team had an embarrassment of brilliant, mercurial players, including Garrincha, Didí, Vavá and the 17-year-old Pelé, but the hard-working, tactically shrewd left-winger was just as important: in the final he cleared the ball off his own line to prevent the 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 played in every game of the tournament, in his tireless role on the left; if anything, he played even deeper than in 1958. Zagallo’s disciplined game was the perfect complement to Garrincha on the right wing, an immensely gifted, free-spirited footballer unencumbered by team tactics, who became Brazil’s match-winner after Pelé was injured in the second game.
Zagallo was born in the city of Maceió on Brazil’s north-east coast to Maria Antonieta Lobo and Haroldo Zagallo. The family moved to Rio when he was a baby. He spent his senior playing career with two of Rio’s biggest clubs: Flamengo, from 1950 to 1958, and then Botafogo until he retired as a player in 1965, after winning the last of his 33 international caps. A year later he became the manager of Botafago and was an immediate success, winning two state titles and one national title with the club in the late 1960s.
Even so, his call-up to manage 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 taken Brazil through the qualifying stages, was sacked after a series of rash, paranoid outbursts.
Zagallo was third choice to replace Saldanha but, once installed, stamped his authority on 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 joie de vivre. In 2013, Zagallo told me that this success had marked the pinnacle of his career. For a moment, the customary seriousness vanished from his face and he glowed with pride: “To lead my country to a victory in the World Cup, and to play the football we did … That was such an honour, such a privilege.”
Four years later, in West Germany, Zagallo was still in charge, but the team were a shadow of their 1970 incarnation. He had begged Pelé, now 33, to join him for one more tournament but the player told him he could make a lot more money as a football ambassador for Pepsi than he could from the game itself; other players had retired or were injured and, though Rivellino and Jairzinho were still playing, Brazil were uncharacteristically cynical. In a game that was effectively the semi-final, they were outclassed by the Netherlands. Nevertheless, Brazil finished the tournament in fourth place.
For the next 16 years Zagallo went to and fro between managing clubs in Rio, including three more stints with Botafogo, and lucrative jobs in the Middle East, taking charge of the Saudi club side Al-Hilal and the national teams of Kuwait, 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 finals in Italy over a contractual dispute, and became the assistant Brazil manager a year later under his friend and former apprentice Carlos Alberto Parreira. After a wait of 24 years, the pair led their country to World Cup victory in 1994, though in a rather more defensive, workmanlike manner than former Brazilian champions.
When Parreira stepped down after the tournament, Zagallo took over as manager of Brazil for a second time and guided the team, led by the seemingly unstoppable centre-forward Ronaldo, to the final of the 1998 World Cup against the hosts, France. Brazil were favourites, but on the morning of the final Ronaldo suffered a mystery convulsion, was sent to hospital for tests, and was dropped from the starting 11 – only to show up at the stadium just before kick off, demanding to play.
Zagallo was put in the impossible position of deciding whether Ronaldo should appear or not. Had it been any other player, the decision would have been simple, but Ronaldo was the player of the tournament on whom Brazil’s hopes rested. So Zagallo picked him. However, Ronaldo, indeed the whole team, were so traumatised 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 united as manager and assistant of Brazil once more for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, but it was an unhappy reunion and the ageing team were eliminated by France in the quarter-finals. That was Zagallo’s seventh World Cup in half a century, and the only one in which he did not reach, at the very least, the last four of the competition.
In the build up to the 2014 tournament, the first time it had been held in Brazil for 64 years, Fifa named Zagallo a World Cup ambassador. “I was a soldier [on duty] at the 1950 World Cup and today I’ve been promoted to ambassador. It’s a very big jump,” he said, though he was hospitalised 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, football player and manager, born 9 August 1931; died 5 January 2024
