Simply THE greatest TEAM of all TIME
50 years on from winning the World Cup, Carlos Alberto Parreira gives the inside story on Pele and Co...
We were not up to date with the new trends, the pressure game, the intensity. We changed what had been the norm
THE young man looked down from the mountain. The world was at his feet and of those he was watching in rigorous training schedules. The scene was a golf course in Itanhangá, high above Rio de Janeiro, in the early months of 1970 and Carlos Alberto Gomes Parreira, who was to become one of the greatest managers of all time, was surveying a group of players destined to become the greatest international team of all time.
Rio has since grown and swallowed Itanhangá, making it part of the sprawling, chaotic city. The Brazilian team of 1970, however, stands proudly and starkly alone at the pinnacle of the game.
Parreira, now a garrulous and insightful 77-year-old, was then a physical trainer for the national side. He watched and learned. He has survived and prospered in the half century since Brazil gloriously won the World Cup in Mexico. He remembers all the stories, too.
The line from Brazil seems to crackle with his enthusiasm and shake from the sheer vigour of his recollections. He talks of the humility of Pele, the respect of the cigarette-puffing Gerson, the adaptability of Tostao, the strength of Jairzinho, the strategy behind the communal flair, the genius of Mario Zagallo, how the World Cup was won from the lessons of England 1966, how harmony shimmered among a clutch of geniuses.
He laughs, too, about how the younger players were quickly put in their place by the ‘old heads’ and how Pele reacted to the thought that he might be ‘rested’ in a group match. He tells of what he learned at the feet of those greats and how he went on to become a coach who would lead Brazil to the greatest trophy in 1994, manage five different countries at the World Cup and win the Asian Cup with two different countries.
But first he tells the inside story of a side that seduced the world. He goes back to Itanhangá and the early months of 1970.
‘We had a very humble preparation,’ he says. ‘We went to a hotel up in the mountains. It was a one star. It had one telephone, too. One of those big black ones you no longer see. We went to the golf course that we had changed into a football park in Kombis (Volkswagen camper vans). Yes, there was sacrifice, but everyone was enjoying it.’
He pauses to give a brief history lesson. ‘For me, everything that is in football today started with the World Cup in England in 1966. It is like BC and AD. There is football before England 1966 and football after 1966. They are totally different.
‘Brazil were not up to date with the new trends. First in 1966, it was the start of the pressure game. Space on the pitch was getting smaller, players were getting faster. There was an extraordinary intensity. Then there was the deployment of four men in the middle. We had the technical side of the game but we had to develop the physicality and we had time to do that before Mexico in 1970.’ Parreira was part of a dedicated cadre of fitness coaches. ‘We changed what had been the norm in Brazilian football,’ he says. ‘Everybody had personalised training with their own charts. Every player was told what was specifically important for them. The players took all this in, they accepted all this from the very beginning. They believed in it. We scored 19 goals in six matches. Eleven of them came in the last half hour of the match. That tells you something about our conditioning.’ But there was inspiration to match the perspiration. ‘There was a strong ambition in that squad,’ he adds. ‘We wanted to be world champions again. We had won in 1958 and 1962 and then came England where we failed badly. We wanted to be back at the top again.’
He recalls with obvious warmth the great actors in a spectacular drama: ‘Pele? Humble. You didn’t have to be a coach to see that. The players all called him Rei (The King) but you watched him with the people after training, smiling and chatting, signing autographs.
‘He was respectful to people whoever they were. Remember, Pele played with Zagallo in 1958 and 1962 but he never crossed the line with the manager. It was very clear. Pele was saying: “I am the player, he is the head coach”. He is still very warm, very generous when we meet. A great friend, always.
‘But then he was a leader. We know how technically good he was but he was tactically aware. He was a team player. When we wanted to relay something to the players we did it through the leaders; Pele, Gerson, Carlos Alberto (captain). They would pass on what we wanted, reinforce our message.
‘Pele, though, was loved as well as respected. I remember this. He was always sitting. He would never stand. I would ask him why and he would say: “I have to save my legs for the game”.
‘Zagallo would protect him, too. One hour before the game everyone would be surrounding him, coaches, officials, players, whoever. Zagallo would announce: “Leave the King in peace. Don’t disturb him any more”. Pele would lie back and stretch out his legs.’
The King, though, could impose his authority. Brazil beat England 1-0 in a crucial group match, ensuring progress to the quarterfinals with a game to spare.
‘The younger players were celebrating on the way to the dressing room, shouting about winning this and winning that. Pele told them to be quiet. He said: “We have won nothing. Nothing”.’
After wins against Czechoslovakia and Alf Ramsey’s side, Brazil faced Romania in the final group match with qualification guaranteed.
‘The press then reported that Zagallo would save players for the last eight and Pele would be one of them. Pele read this and was angry. He said: “What? Saving players? I have been working hard for six months to play in a World Cup and I want to play all six matches. No way am I missing out”.’ He didn’t.
Parreira has short, sharp insights into other players. ‘Gerson was the brain,’ he says of the languorous, stylish midfielder. ‘He could hold, organise, change tempo. He knew when to play it short, play it long.’ The then 29-year-old Sao Paolo player was a smoker but that was not an issue for the coaches.
‘We would never see him smoking,’ says Parreira. ‘He had too much respect to do that to the coaches. He never hid the fact that he smoked but he did not flout it either.’
Of Jairzinho, who scored in every match in the tournament, he says: ‘There was a reason behind this consistency. In all the months of training, he never missed a session. He was powerful. Committed.’
Parreira talks, too, of the
importance of the ‘ambience of the team’. With so many great players, there is always the danger of the individual ego undermining the collective spirit but Brazil 1970 were a united team.
‘Zagallo was very important in achieving this,’ he says. ‘Remember, he had been a great player, too. But he had also won titles as a manager. His principle was to play the best players. But we had to find a position that suited all of them. We had at least four No 10s in the starting XI: Pele, Tostao, Gerson, and Rivelino were accustomed to playing there, so we had to shape a team.’
Rivelino was pushed wide on the left, Tostao played as a deep-lying No9, Gerson ran central midfield and Pele wore the No 10 jersey.
With Jairzinho, they were the creative elements in an adventurous team. But Parreira maintains that the fluidity and enterprise were underpinned by a solidity.
He says: ‘Zagallo constructed the team to play without the ball. We knew how to play with the ball but he taught them how to play without it. Look at that side on TV clips. It was compact all the time.
‘There was a strength, there was an ambition, but a tactical organisation, too. There was also intensity. If the players were talking a bit easier, maybe the young players having a laugh at the wrong time, you would hear Pele or Gerson saying: “Listen, this is my last World Cup, so settle down and behave yourself because we want to win it”. That took care of any mischief.’
Parreira went on to manage Brazil to the World Cup in 1994 and to coach Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and South Africa in the finals. ‘I never really thought or dreamed of being a football coach. I never played professional football. I wanted to be a physical trainer, maybe work with young kids,’ he says.
He completed his physical education training in 1968 and approached the Brazilian football federation to see if there were any posts at home and abroad.
‘Incredibly, I was offered the job as national coach of Ghana. I was only 25. My father gave me $100 to go.’
It taught him a lesson. ‘You have to look for opportunities,’ he says. ‘You can’t wait for things to come to you. You have to work. You have to pay the price. But people don’t want to pay the price. They want to start as president of the company. They want the best salary. You must start from the bottom.’
He saved $6,000 from his Ghana salary and went to study in Germany and England. ‘I used to go to see Chelsea train when Dave Sexton was the manager,’ he says. He was recruited to the Brazilian staff for the 1970 World Cup and his career subsequently took him around the world. His highlight, of course, was winning the World Cup with Brazil in 1994, beating Italy on penalties in the final. ‘The feeling? My God, it is so huge, you cannot express it in words,’ he says of triumph in the biggest football game on the planet. ‘The first one in 1970 was so emotional. The people were in the streets everywhere. But 1994 was different. People were so hungry for the World Cup. Many had never seen Brazil win a World Cup as it had been 24 years of disappointments.’
There had been enormous pressure on him. He was criticised for what was perceived as a highly-defensive set-up and he had to control the highly-talented but mercurial Romario. But Parreira retained his focus amid a barrage of adverse comment. ‘This has always been my view. The press? They say what they want to say, they write what they want to write but I told the team and the staff we do what we think is right,’ he says. He has always been aware that teams are judged on results rather than performance, though the 1994 and 1970 teams were capable of excelling at both. Parreira adds: ‘I look back at those two World Cups and think: “We won. So everything is perfect”. You don’t look back and see any mistakes. This is always true of great victories.’ This may be the greatest lesson of all from the young student who became a master of the sport.