Brazil football legend Mario Zagallo dies aged 92

Former Brazil player and coach Mario Zagallo attends the FIFA World Cup Ambassadors Press Conference ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Draw at Costa do Sauipe Resort on Dec. 5, 2013 in Costa do Sauipe, Brazil. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)

RIO DE JANEIRO, January 6, 2024 – Brazilian and world football is in mourning. Mario Jorge Lobo Zagallo, world champion as a player (1958 and 1962), coach (1970) and technical coordinator (1994), died on January 5, 2024 at the age of 92. 

Zagallo was born in the city of Atalaia in Alagoas, but when he was still young he came to Rio de Janeiro. In 1950, he liked to remember, he was at Maracanã in the final, helping with security as a member of the Army Police – eight years later, he would become world champion, in Sweden. “That defeat marked me. I swore that we would be champions,” he liked to remember.

As a player, Zagallo started with América’s youth system. He arrived in the Brazilian national team for the Oswaldo Cruz Cup, in 1958, already as an athlete for Flamengo. Called up for the World Cup in Sweden, he played all six games and scored a goal in the final, in Brazil’s 5-2 defeat of Sweden. Four years later, he became world champion again, in Chile.

On the eve of the 1970 World Cup, the “old Lobo” was called to take charge of the Brazilian national team. Now with Pelé, with whom he had played in the first two triumphs, as coach, he returned to being champion, with an irreproachable campaign, only of victories in Mexico. In 1974, in the German Cup, he led the Brazilian team to fourth place.

After the definitive conquest of the Jules Rimet Cup, Brazil did not win the World Cup until 1994, when Zagallo was the technical coordinator and Parreira (his physical trainer in the 1970s) took over as coach. It seemed that, really, Zagallo had to be in the group for Brazil to win.

Superstitiously, he liked to make connections with the number 13. His phrase became famous when asked about his preparation for the 1998 World Cup (he was runner-up, again as a coach). “They’re going to have to swallow me,” he repeated, provoking those who defended that he was outdated.

Vicente Dattoli – AIPS EC Member