Telê Santana
July 26th, 1931
Everyone who knows anything about football will happily tell you that the Brazil team who won the 1970 World Cup were the greatest team to have ever played the game. It was a team filled with legendary names; Pelé, Rivellino, Jairzinho, Carlos Alberto. The latter’s goal to make it 4-1 against Italy in the final is widely considered one of the greatest ever scored. Across any football land, men in pubs will clear tables and use salt shakers, beer mats and empty glasses to lovingly recreate the moment the big right back appears on screen, seemingly from the very cathode-ray ether itself, hammer the ball home and then wheel, leaping, arms aloft into the Mexican sunshine, behind an exhausted Italian goal.
It was an explosion of exuberance, joy and brilliance for which Brazilian football became known and it wasn’t just Brazil who celebrated. It seemed like Brazil had changed the world, Football wasn’t a game of slide-rules and aerobic sprint runs. It was beach football played to a samba rhythm and nobody could live with it. FIFA gave up and just let them keep the World Cup. They made a whole new one, the one they still play for today.
But it wasn’t a new beginning. Instead, it marked the end of an age of innocence. The 1970 World Cup was played in Mexico in sweltering heat and at high altitude and the physical dominance of, in particular, the European teams had simply proved impossible to recreate. In the previous tournament, played in the bleak rain of England, they had been bullied out of the tournament, as the holders, falling at the second group stage. In Mexico, at height, those same teams couldn’t lay a finger, or if necessary, a boot on them. Brazil were so good primarily because they had the space in which to play. 25 minutes of the high-pressure game needed to close down that space was enough for sides like Italy, who simply wilted in the effort.
Technicolor satellites, narrated by grainy telephoned commentary, beamed the promise of a brave new footballing world. 1966 had mostly been in black and white. Mexico was a riot of colour and that colour was Brazilian yellow. This was the era of Moon landings and space futures and it looked like it would be played out to a samba beat.
At the end of the day, Brazil’s victory, like the Moon landings promised a great future that never quite arrived. The 1970s stomped on Earth’s expansionist tendencies and European teams, literally, stamped on Brazil when they came down from the stratosphere of Mexico City.
To be fair to Brazil, they knew this and Mario Zagallo, who had masterminded the 1970 victory (if you can call just putting that team on the pitch and saying ‘go for it lads’ as a masterstroke), adopted a far more pragmatic approach when 1974 came around beneath the Berlin Wall in West Germany. Brazil were knocked out in the second round against the new superstars of world football, Holland. Brazil knew they had to compete physically against the Europeans and it seemed to go to their heads. Against Holland, they were brutal, and they lost. There was nothing sunshine, samba or sand about them.
For 1978, they went even further down the rabbit hole, seemingly abandoning every last vestige of the beautiful game in favor of ice hearted physical snarl. There has always been a gladiatorial heart to Brazilian football, but in 1978, that’s all they had. They employed a former army captain, Cláudio Coutinho, as team coach and he prepared the team by running them into the ground. They would go to Argentina with steel in their hearts and in their boots, determined that they wouldn’t get pushed about.
They finished third. Worse, Argentina won it.
For 1982, Brazil had the former Pamleiras coach, Telê Santana in charge and if you ask fans in Brazil to name their favourite coach of all time, there's a strong chance you'll hear his name
For the likes of Fluminense had been a great player, playing over 550 games. However, it was his transition into management in 1967 which propelled him to new heights. He cut his teeth in management with Fluminense's youth sides, enjoying three successful years at the helm of the academy before being handed his first senior job with Atletico Mineiro.
Santana had a clear vision for how football should be played, and he relentlessly instilled this vision in his players. He drilled his players hard, but let them express themselves on the pitch and when they did, the results were remarkable.
In 1971, he guided Atletico Mineiro to a league title, which remained his sole competitive triumph for many years. After stints with various Brazilian teams, Santana reemerged in the spotlight in 1980 when Brazil came calling.
Early results weren’t great as his tactics and personnel choices seemed distracted. But Santana persisted with what Brazilians call jogo bonito - the beautiful game. His instinct was to follow the example of 1970 and attack from the start. Sure, he would drill a sense of iron into his players and for 1982 he had some of the best in the world, but they would play like Brazil and that meant one thing only - score goals. Lots of them. The 1982 World Cup was to be played in the scouring heat of a Spanish summer and Santana knew that, like in Mexico, he could use this to create the space his team needed.
The captain of the 1982 side was the incomparable Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, known simply as Sócrates. Six feet four, powerful, and with two feet that could hammer in goals from seemingly anywhere, he was the heartbeat of the side and the hero of the nation. He was a physician who got his medical degree whilst playing professionally, a playboy who drank like a drain and chain smoked, and an intellectual and socialist who founded democratic movements against Brazil’s military regime. His denunciation of the military dictatorship and fight to democratize Brazil extended his legacy far beyond the football pitch
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Alongside him was another legend, Zico, perhaps the best player in the world at that moment. Brazil had 4 players in the middle of the park who could destroy any team in the world, but no wide players. So, Santana simply didn’t bother out wide, played everyone in the middle of the park and, in the manner of 1970, just told them to get on with it.
What Santana had assembled was probably, behind the 1970 team, the greatest football team ever to play the game. This was a team of such fluency and poise in possession that they didn’t need width or space, they created it with themselves.
The Brazil of 1982 produced some of the most exhilarating football the World Cup had ever seen. They dismissed the USSR without even breaking sweat. They swept aside Scotland 4-1 and New Zealand 4-0. They made the game look effortless. Deft touches, intelligent running, chipped passes and piledriver long range shooting.
They were unstoppable against reigning champions and old enemy Argentina, winning 3-1 and next in line was Italy. Italy represented the antithesis of jogo bonito. The old Italian tactic of catenaccio (literally ‘door bolt’) where they would suck teams in, score a single goal, and then grind out a defensive win was going out of fashion, but still Italian pragmatism would be no match for the samba juggernaut coming their way.
All Brazil had to do was draw and they would win the group and go through. There were no other teams in their way who had any hope of stopping them. Brazil however, under Santana would have no mention of playing for the tie, or of trying to temper the Italian style. They were going to cut loose.
It might have been the greatest game the World Cup has ever seen. The occasion certainly felt epic; it played in sweltering heat before a crowd that was officially 45,000, but probably had another 20,000 crammed into the stadium.
Had Brazil scored first, Italy would have melted, unable to play catch-up to the conditions or their opponents. But, in the 5th minute, Brazil fell asleep and Paolo Rossi, the Italian legend, headed the ball home.
Stung into life, Brazil responded immediately, Sócrates putting in Zico to level the scores. The pattern of the game was set. Brazil would throw everything at Italy, who would hang on desperately and try to counter attack. Instead, another dreadful Brazilian error struck and a lazy pass saw Rossi steal in for a second goal.
Brazil responded by attacking more, but it wasn’t until mid-way through the second half that they equalized. At this point, Brazil were going through and Italy were going home. All they had to do was rein in the attacking style, play sensibly, counter attack when they could and in 20 minutes, the World Cup was at their mercy.
So, they attacked instead. Because Brazil didn’t play dour, Italian, door bolt football. They didn’t play with thunderous brutality of the English, or the cool, studied technicality of the Germans. They didn’t play with the swooning drama of the French, nor the one-for-all, all-for-one, pavement cafe, student protest liberation of the Dutch.
Brazil played jogo bonito, the beautiful game. They played to the sound of João Gilberto and the rhythm of carnival. They played to the backdrop of Rio de Janeiro, rum, vibrancy and color. They played to the proud, stiff backed, democratic rallying of Sócrates, and to Carlos Alberto, his hands raised to the heavens in joy. For Pelé.
And they lost.
They could have tightened up and held what they had, but that was not the Brazilian way. They kept on attacking, and paid the price. A corner was half-cleared, Marco Tardelli miss-hit his shot from the edge of the box and Rossi pounced, putting the ball into the net
It ended 3-2 to Italy. Italy would go on to win the tournament. Brazil, and jogo bonito, went home.
Zico would later call it ‘the day football died’ and whilst this might sound rather dramatic, he had something of a point. Football would never be played in the same way again and whilst, even to this day, Brazil is still associated with ‘samba football’, the spirit of the team of 1982, the greatest team never to win the World Cup, has long since been swamped by more pragmatic ways of winning.
It represented a Rubicon for football. Great players could still be incorporated into any side, but now it had to be done in the structure of team. It was no longer enough to simply put out 11 Brazilians and tell them to beat everyone. European dogma of structure and routine had won the day. Even in Brazil the idea of winning before style came to dominate the game. Whereas before the public demanded that their national side, the mascot of the nation, beat everyone and beat them playing jogo bonito, now they simply had to win and win at any cost. Brazilian football, as a result, retreated into more worldly and brutal ways of winning. The team that won the 1994 World Cup did so by scraping and sometimes elbowing past opponents. The 2002 World Cup winning team was brimming with talent - maybe some of the greatest players of all time, especially in Il Fenomeno, Ronaldo, arguably the greatest striker ever - but they were, first and foremost, a pragmatic side.
Telê Santana never led Brazil to glory, but he is still regarded as one of greatest managers and innovators in the history of Brazilian football. He left Brazil after 1982 and was tempted to Saudi Arabia with a huge paycheck. Brazil dragged him back for the 1986 World Cup, but it was never the same.
He returned to coach in Brazilian club football and it was there, after joining São Paulo in 1990 that he had his greatest success, leading them to the title in the Copa Libertadores, South America’s greatest club competition, twice in 1992 and 1993.
In 1996 he suffered a stroke which forced him to retire. He had part of his left leg amputated in 2003 due to ischemia and he died on April 21st, 2006. He was buried at Cemitério Parque da Colina, in Belo Horizonte.
Telê Santana remains the last great bastion of a style of play that was more than just about sport. It was about the free expression of a nation’s psyche. No other nation on Earth is defined so easily by its national team than Brazil. Ask anyone to name five things about Brazil and they will all say soccer. Even mentioning the name ‘Brazil’ brings visions of riotous color, joy, exuberance, passion and beauty, pride, freedom and style.
Telê Santana didn’t invent that, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it go, either.