My Life and the Beautiful Game by Pele

Author:Pele
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2011-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The Brazilian Selection for the World Cup of 1962 was almost the same as the 1958 Selection, with a few changes. Our coach and manager, Vicente Feola, was in poor health and was replaced by Aimoré Moreira, brother of Zeze Moreira, who had managed the 1954 team. Of the players who had been in that final game in Stockholm we still had Gilmar, Nilton Santos, Djalma Santos, Zito, Didi, Garrincha, Vavá, Zagalo, and myself. Belini was in reserve and Mauro took his place on the first team. Orlando was playing in Argentina and was replaced by Zózimo, while Mazzola—whose real name was Altafini and who held dual Italian-Brazilian citizenship—played for Italy that year.

The rule as to eligibility in World Cup football is quite different from that of club games—or of most other sports, as far as that goes. American baseball, for example, uses many players from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, or Mexico, and they are certainly not barred from playing in the World Series—if they were, the World Series would probably be won by a Little League team from Logansport. But in the Jules Rimet Trophy competition, a player must be a national of the country for which he plays. Where a player holds dual citizenship, which is rare but which occurs at times as in the case of Altafini, he can play for either country. There are also cases where a player will change his nationality to play for a certain team, but again these cases are rare. It is a very good rule and prevents any wealthy country from “buying” the championship simply because they may be able to afford to purchase a player’s contract from clubs in other countries for large sums of money.

In addition to those who played in that final game in Stockholm we also had Pepe, who had been on the Selection twice but who had never managed to get into a final game because of injury, or because Zagalo was doing too good a job to be replaced. There was also Castilho, a carry-over from 1954 who also had no chance to play, and we had many new players, many young players—because at age twenty-one I now considered myself an old boy, especially since I had more than five years of professional experience plus one World Cup behind me. We had players like Amarildo, Jair da Costa, Coutinho— one of the very best and with whom I paired so well at Santos— Mengálvio, Zequinha, Jair Marinho, and Jurandir. The head of the commission remained Dr. Paulo Machado de Carvalho, and Carlos Nascimento remained his assistant; our technical staff also remained the same, with Paulo Amaral our trainer, Mário Américo our head masseur, Dr. Mário Trigo still our dentist, and Dr. Hilton Gosling still our team physician.

Brazil, by winning in 1958, had automatically qualified for the finals, as had Chile, which was to be the host country. We had qualified as one of the sixteen finalists, but we still had to win our key group in order to go on to the quarter-finals.

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