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I don’t believe tactics are always the most important aspect in how a game works out. Rather they are one aspect among many—a neglected one perhaps, but just one thread, alongside ability, fitness, motivation, power, and luck, in an immensely complex tapestry.
They exploited South America’s natural resources, and in return they gave soccer.
The man behind the scenes who finds players, trains talent, gets the best out of the men at his command is the most important man in the game from the club’s point of view.
he celebrated by dancing in front of a directors’ box packed with high-ranking Nazis.
it seems to have become almost a parody of Englishness, all hats and moustaches, hurrahs and manliness.
it does not explain why the Flamengo president Jose Bastos Padilha settled upon him as the man to further his plans for Carioca domination, which had already included funding the construction of a new stadium.
Carvalhães suggested he was unsuited to high-pressure games. Feola ignored him and insisted both should be in his squad.
Neither, though, played in Brazil’s opening game, an unexceptional 3–0 win over Austria. Pelé was injured, while Garrincha had fallen out of favor for showboating in a warm-up friendly against Fiorentina (having rounded the goalkeeper he decided not to roll the ball into an empty net, but to wait for him to recover, upon which he beat him again before walking the ball over the line).
In total, of the eleven who would eventually start against the USSR, he judged nine unsuitable for such a high-pressure game. Fortunately Feola trusted his own judgment and selected both Pelé and Garrincha.
The Englishman considers a player that dribbles three times in succession is a nuisance; the Brazilian considers him a virtuoso.
It is, frankly, horrifying that a philosophy founded on such a basic misinterpretation of figures could have been allowed to become a cornerstone of English coaching.
Anti-intellectualism is one thing, but faith in wrongheaded pseudointellectualism is far worse.
“The players are nervous. It is a big match, a big crowd, but the ball: that is their life. Then I made the players hug each other. Not kiss, just hug! And I told them, ‘We are all in the same boat!’…
“I remember, at one point, Picchi turned to the goalkeeper and said, ‘Giuliano, let it go, just let it go. It’s pointless, sooner or later they’ll get the winner,’” Burgnich said. “I never thought I would hear those words, I never imagined my captain would tell our keeper to throw in the towel. But that only shows how destroyed we were at that point. It’s as if we did not want to prolong the agony.”
Pressing and the high offside line were Zubeldía’s legitimate innovations, but there was also a more sinister side. It was the violence of Estudiantes that shocked Europeans,
“When I went to Barcelona, Michels wanted the centre-backs to push out to make the offside line. In Brazil this was known as the donkey line: people thought it was stupid. The theory was that if you passed one defender, you passed all the others.”
As if to seal the symbolic link, the second moon landing happened on the same day that Pelé converted a penalty for Santos against Vasco da Gama to reach one thousand career goals.
The Brazil of 1982 produced the most exhilarating soccer the World Cup had known since 1970.
It was, as Glanville said, “the game in which Brazil’s glorious midfield, put finally to the test, could not make up for the deficiencies behind and in front of it.”
Brazilian players had to be as robust and muscular as Europeans, and if that meant a certain flair and technical finesses was lost, that was a necessary price of progress. In 1958, Brazil had had Didí and Zito in the middle of midfield; by 2010 they had Gilberto Silva and Felipe Melo.
I’d feel very bad if we lost a match and that night I’m seen out eating calmly in some place. I can’t allow it. Football is played to win.… Shows are for the cinema, for the theatre.… Football is something else. Some people are very confused.”
there was Diego Maradona, and after him, a host of new Maradonas: Ariel Ortega, Pablo Aimar, Javier Saviola, Andres d’Alessandro, Juan Román Riquelme, Carlos Tévez, and Leo Messi.
It is arguable, in fact, that the first team to deploy a 4–5–1 to international success was the great Flamengo side of Paulo César Carpegiani, which beat Liverpool 3–0 to win the Intercontinental Cup in 1981
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