Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Greatness: 1958-1970
Success was not long in coming. A series of great teams, all with the incomparable
Pelé
as playmaker, won the World Cup in Sweden in 1958 (still the only World Cup a South
American team has won in Europe), and then retained it in Chile in 1962, even with
Pelé injured. His place as heart of the team was taken by probably the greatest winger in
football history,
Mané Garrincha
, an alcoholic all his adult life, including his footballing
years, who died tragically young in a life that transfixed Brazilians then and now. Then,
most memorably, Brazil won the
1970 World Cup
in Mexico with what is universally
regarded as the greatest team in the history of the game, with Pelé surrounded by such
great names as
Gerson
,
Rivelino
,
Tostão
and
Carlos Alberto
. Brazil got to keep the
Jules
Rimet trophy
as the World Cup's first three-time winners. Embarrassingly, but rather
typically, bandits stole the historic cup from the headquarters of the Brazilian football
association in Rio in 1983; it was never seen again.
The 1980s
After an interlude during the 1970s, Brazil flirted with greatness again in the 1980s,
when a new generation of
craques
(the wonderful Portuguese word for crack players),
led by
Zico
in attack but also including an extraordinary midfield made up of
Falcão
,
Sócrates
,
Éder
and
Cerezo
,
failed to win the World Cups of 1982 and 1986; they played
some of the best football in the tournament's history in the process, losing to Italy in
1982 and France in 1986 in matches that have become legendary.
Good but not great: the 1990s
It took Brazil until
1994
to reclaim the World Cup for the
fourth time
, when they beat
Italy on penalties in one of the worst finals on record. This was a triumph built on such
un-Brazilian virtues as a combative rather than a creative midfield and a solid defence;
a team whose only endearing features were the comically dependable incompetence of
its goalkeeper,
Taffarel
, maintaining a great Brazilian tradition of fragility between the
sticks, and the quality of the attack, where the brilliance of
Romário
found the perfect
foil in
Bebeto
.
But there was uneasiness in Brazil at the workmanlike way they had won - an
uneasiness that crystallized into scandal four years later in France when, despite the
presence of the young prodigy
Ronaldo
leading the attack, they had an unconvincing
campaign. They were lucky to get to the final, where a French side that looked inferior
on paper beat them 3-0. There was strong suspicion that Ronaldo, who suffered a
seizure before the game, only played at the insistence of the team's sponsor, Nike. This
symbolized a widespread feeling in Brazil that the game was on the wrong track: club
owners selling out to commercial interests; stars making their living in Europe and
forgetting their obligation to the national team; and a duller, more European-style
emphasis on fitness and teamwork banishing the individual skill that lies at the heart of
futebol-arte
as a result. There was and is something to this; unprecedented amounts of
money flowed into Brazilian football in the 1990s, and it would certainly have been
unthinkable to the national sides of 1970 and the 1980s that Brazil could play two
finals of a World Cup without scoring a goal in open play.
Into the twenty-first century
Brazil's malaise seemed to deepen in the run-up to the
2002 World Cup
: corruption
scandals roiled the game; Ronaldo was sidelined by career-threatening injuries; and the
team struggled for the first time ever to qualify for the competition, coming close to
the indignity of having to play Australia in a play-off to get there at all. So when Brazil
won the competition that year - for a
record fifth time
- it was a heartening surprise.
There were several factors behind it, most importantly Ronaldo's recovery from injury
and shrewd manager
Felipe Scolari
's ability to pull together a settled, solid side just
when it mattered most. Brazil played some fantastic football on their way to a final
