Mário Zagallo, who as both a player and coach helped lead Brazil to four World Cup titles, becoming a national hero and one of only three people to lift the tournament’s trophy in both roles, died on Friday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 92 years old.
His death was confirmed by his family on his social media channels. The Barra D’Or hospital in Rio de Janeiro, where he had been admitted several times in recent months, said the cause was multiple organ failure.
Offensive-minded winger as a player and tactically minded coach known as “the Professor”, Zagallo was part of the Brazilian teams that won back-to-back world championships in 1958 and 1962 and the head coach of the 1970 champions Brazil.
His triumph in 1970 made Zagallo the first person to win the World Cup as both a player and coach, a feat that has since been equaled only by Franz Beckenbauer of Germany and Didier Deschamps of France. But it may have been that team’s style of play, as well as its success, that cemented a recurring role for Zagallo in Brazilian football history.
Led by stars such as his former teammate Pelé, Jairzinho and Carlos Alberto, the 1970 Brazil team is widely considered one of the best football teams ever assembled. He was forged in a crisis after his popular predecessor fell out with the country’s military government: Zagallo was named head coach less than two months before the opening match of the tournament. Zagallo found himself having to coach many players who had only recently been his teammates.
“It was easy to lead, because the players saw and felt that I had the strength of personality to make the changes I thought were necessary,” Zagallo remembered in a 2011 interview with The Blizzard, a quarterly soccer magazine. “I imposed myself and this type of leadership in front of the group is fundamental, even if you have already participated in this group as a player.”
The team adapted to Zagallo’s tactical changes and then danced and danced their way into the hearts and minds of fans not only in Brazil but around the world.
Under Zagallo’s direction, in the first color telecast of the World Cup around the world, the Brazil team, dressed in its famous canary yellow jerseys, perfected high-art football in its six consecutive victories in Mexico . Cruising through the tournament with a series of memorable goals, the team showcased the fluid and elegant attacking style known as “o jogo bonito” (“the beautiful game”), which has become Brazil’s calling card around the world .
Returning as head coach, Zagallo guided Brazil to fourth place in 1974. Two decades later, back on the national team bench as assistant to Carlos Alberto Parreira, he helped Brazil win its fourth championship with a victory over Italy in 1994 final in Pasadena, California.
Parreira’s team, a gritty and more results-oriented team, was less popular than in previous editions of the Seleção, as the Brazilian national team is known. But he was celebrated for delivering the award that the country desires more than all others.
Four years later, with Zagallo back at the top and stars like Ronaldo leading another potent attack, Brazil returned to the World Cup final. But his run had come amid criticism from a nation of amateur coaches, who feared that, despite his links to Brazil’s most legendary teams, Zagallo had surrendered to his pragmatic side.
He did little to calm purists when he declared that a victorious end justifies any means. “I would rather win playing ugly football than lose playing attractive football,” she said. Brazil, alas, no: heavily favored, they were stunned by hosts France in the final.
In 2002, when the team traveled to South Korea and Japan to capture the record fifth title that had eluded them in France, Zagallo served as special advisor to Luiz Felipe Scolari’s coaching staff.
That was his last personal connection to a tournament, and a title, that had by then defined his life for more than half a century.
A pivotal moment in his life occurred in 1950, when, as a young security soldier, Zagallo watched Brazil defeat Uruguay in the final before a crowd of around 200,000 at the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro. That defeat, in Brazil’s first trip to the final, was a blow to the nation, and he was among tens of millions of Brazilians who shed tears of disappointment. “That day he never left my mind,” Zagallo told the BBC in 2013.
He went even further when speaking with journalist Andrés Cantor for the book “Goooal: A Celebration Of Soccer” (1996). “From that moment on”, Zagallo remembered on the 1950 World Cup: “I only have memories of football”.
Eight years later, as a national team player, he helped rewrite the ending. In the final in Sweden together with the young Pelé, Zagallo scored a goal in the 5-2 victory that delivered Brazil’s first world title. Four years later, he was back in the team when Brazil repeated the feat in Chile.
Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo was born on August 8. 9, 1931, in Atalaia, a city in the eastern Brazilian state of Alagoas. His father, Haroldo Cardoso Zagallo, was a textile manager. His mother, Maria Antonieta Lobo Zagallo, was part of a family that owned a fabric factory.
Mário Zagallo said his father hoped he would become an accountant and work in the family business. Instead he dedicated his life to football, spending his professional playing career with two Rio clubs, making his debut with Flamengo in 1951 and retiring from Botafogo in 1965.
He married Alcina de Castro, a teacher, in 1955. They had four children: Maria Emilia, Paulo Jorge, Maria Cristina and Mario Cesar. Zagallo’s wife died in 2012. His survivors include his children and several grandchildren.
Since Pelé’s death in 2022, Zagallo has been the last surviving member of the first Brazilian team to win the World Cup. He would continue to burn his legacy over fifty years as coach, assistant and advisor to generations of Brazilian teams.
He would eventually lead more than half a dozen clubs in his native Brazil, as well as the national teams of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But he has never been away from his country, holding four separate roles as Brazil’s head coach.
And even when he didn’t hold the job, he remained a fixture, called upon regularly – in success and failure and especially in difficult times – as a wise and distinguished link to his greatest teams and greatest triumphs.
Alex Traub and Tariq Panja contributed reporting.
