Michael Batson

Great football teams have many elements in common. They have timing, and the right balance of dedication, organisation, and a commitment to a common cause. Great teams like great players can marry inspiration with industry—they work hard. They also usually have an ability to make the difficult seem easy, like no effort at all because they always seem to have both space and time. These two elements define great players because these are part of what sets them apart. Great teams have key players in the right positions coupled with good leadership; both on and off the pitch. Usually there is a star, at least one, and then there is the playmaker – a general, the one who controls everything, who makes those key decisions, and who can direct as well as orchestrate, and lead by their actions. Put another way; while one is the brain the other usually gets all the headlines.

There are many examples of this combination across the ages. There was Nándor Hidegkuti and Ferenc Puskás of the Mighty Magyars in the 1950s. Didi and Vavá of the Brazil World Cup winning teams of 1958 and 1962. There was Willem “Wim” van Hanegem and Johan Cruyff of the Dutch “Clockwork Orange” from the 1974 World Cup. At club level there were Xavi and Messi with Barcelona in the 2000s with Xavi going on to direct Spain to triumph in the 2010 World Cup. Earlier, at Barca’s great rivals, Real Madrid, there was Raymond Kopa who was replaced as playmaker by Luis Del Sol, and Alfredo Di Stefano was a star among many.

The star of Brazil at the 1970 World Cup was Pelé, known the world over, a legend. He was the first black man to feature on the front page of Life magazine and at the time the richest sportsman on the planet. He was reputedly paid USD$800,000 (in today’s money) just to tie his bootlaces in the quarter final match against Peru. He was also the star of Santos (the Santasticos), global footballing troubadours, stars of their age, their country, the continent and beyond. But Brazil’s great playmaker of 1970 was Gérson. Pelé might have had the global image, but it was Gérson that ran the show. Quietly spoken off the field, he did his talking on it or away from the limelight. Short, slight, but broad-shouldered; he did not appear athletically well-endowed but maybe back then he didn’t need to be and anyway, there were others who could do all that.

His talent was such that he was above athleticism. He wasn’t the type of footballer who flickered into life at the end of the match and settled the result with a single stroke of genius, he did it all game long. For many observers the influence of Gérson on the 1970 World Cup Final against Italy was greater than that of Pelé. The latter got Brazil’s first goal in that match; a thunderous header struck from a Rivellino centre. Pelé outjumped the Italian defender at the far post, Tarcisio Burgnich, part of the Inter star-studded team known as Grande Inter and coached by Helenio Herrera, so a class act. Burgnich said of Pelé "I told myself before the game, 'he's made of skin and bones just like everyone else' — but I was wrong.” Gérson scored the second goal, the goal that turned the match and decided the outcome, and it was Gérson who most influenced the outcome of the Final.

After scoring his goal to edge Brazil closer to victory, and ultimately turning the match, he promptly then set up the third. Spotting Pelé in the Italian penalty area he fired another laser-like (or lançamento) pass 40m with pin-point accuracy. A pass so good that after Pelé had unselfishly cushioned the ball with his head into the path the onrushing Jairzinho, so deftly he was able to run it into the net with just his shins and became the first player to score in every round and every game in a World Cup in the process, Gérson asked Pelé why he didn’t score himself. Then, as if to emphasize the match turning, the sun came out and pitch began to dry. Brazil was moving into overdrive.

There was Gérson shouting, directing, cajoling, and always with the vision of seeing everything before it happened, then making it happen with his passing, all of it left-footed, often from deep in his own half. His greatest ability it was said, was turning defence into attack in an instant. He is arguably the greatest passer of a ball Brazil ever produced and was nicknamed Canhotinha de ouro (“Golden Left Foot”). His goal in the Final came after Brazil had again put into play their chief tactic of Jairzinho drawing his man-marker Facchetti out of position on the right before giving the ball to Gérson; who then swerved outside one defender, and let loose an early, vicious shot which flashed across the Italian goalkeeper, Enrico Albertosi, and into the far right-hand corner of the net. A goal out of the blue struck, as journalist David Miller noted ‘with the speed and eye of a cobra.’

One wonders if a player like Gérson would develop today is quite the same way. The game is much more physical than before. There is much less space in which to operate. Most players play everything first-time. There is less time on the ball because players run much more. In Gérson’s time players ran on average just 4kms per match. These days they run almost three times that. He never seemed to run much at all, but rather mostly patrolled an area comprising an about 10m either side of the centre-circle. If he did run much when he was younger, a serious knee injury on the eve of the 1962 World Cup slowed him down.

He also smoked. Not that unusual back in the day but he smoked heavily. Up to three packets of cigarettes a day of his favourite brand. His contract even stipulated a trainer needed to be waiting at the tunnel entrance to the pitch at half-time and after the match, with a cigarette already lit, which gave him time to smoke two during the break. He even made money from advertising tobacco, which got him into trouble. Not because the health authorities objected but because of the advertising; “I like to take advantage of everything, right? You too take advantage!” The punch line for his favourite brand became instantly associated with the traditional Brazilian disregard for laws and social rules as well as bribery and corruption, informally named “Jeitinho Brasileiro” or “the Brazilian way”. The tagline was later phrased "Lei de Gérson" (Gérson’s Law’) which afterwards he distanced himself from and of course now, he doesn’t smoke at all.

Gérson de Oliveira Nunes was born into a footballing family in Niteroi (nicknamed “Smile City”), Rio’s smaller more laid-back sister, which sits across Guanabara Bay from Rio and which can be reached by ferry or over the Niteroi Bridge. At primary school he picked up the nickname papagaio, the parrot, because he talked a lot and was never short of an opinion on most things. His reputation for rampant verbosity, and the nickname remained with him throughout a 16-year professional playing career first with Flamengo, then with their near rivals Botafogo, before moving to the big smoke with São Paulo, and eventually back home to Rio with his favourite team, Fluminense.  He grew up in a footballing household. Both his father and uncle were professional footballers so following in their footsteps seemed a natural choice. As a boy his heroes were midfielders Zizinho (Thomaz Soares da Silva) of Bangu and later Flamengo, Danilo (Botafogo) and inside forward Jair (Flamengo and later of Vasco). He would go and watch other greats like Garrincha (“Little Bird”) and Didi (Waldyr Pereira), both of whom he would later play alongside at Botafogo. The legendary Zizinho was a close friend of his father’s and a frequent visitor to the Nunes home.

Gérson’s career from the get-go marked him out for a big future in the game. Less than a year after his debut in 1958 for the Ruby Negras of Flamengo, he was in the Brazilian ‘amateur’ team for the Pan-American Games in Chicago where they finished behind Argentina. A year later he was a lynchpin of the side at the Rome Olympics. Despite Brazil failing to move beyond the group stage—their only loss was to Italy 3-2; a side that contained some players who he would face in the Final in Mexico 10 years later— Gérson attracted attention from some of the big Italian clubs but returned to Brazil, his star on the rise. By 1961 with the great Didi ageing, he starred in the Brazilian side that won the inter-South American competition (Brazil were again runners-up to Argentina) and had also been recruited into the full national side for the 1962 World Cup.

In 1961 and 1962, Flamengo twice made the final of the Campeonato Carioca, the Rio Championship, where each time they were beaten by local rivals Botafogo. In these finals, Gérson was given the near impossible task of man marking Garrincha. Garrincha was a dribbling genius. Deformed (one leg was bowed, the other was bent) and alcoholic, he was virtually unplayable. It was for him that crowds began bullfighting chants of olé as he beat defenders with ease and some more than once, just for fun. In 1963, Gérson chose not to renew his contract with Brazil’s most popular club, instead opting to sign for the current state champions, Botafogo, the club dubbed the Fogão (The Great Fire). If you can’t beat them Gérson figured, join them.

In the 1960s, Botafogo was hugely successful. They had the best squad of any team in Rio and with Santos, probably in the whole of Brazil. At Botafogo, Gérson played understudy to Didi, arguably the greatest Brazilian player of the pre-television age, and up to that point probably their best midfielder ever. As well as Garrincha and Didi, they also had in the team Zagallo on the wing, striker Amarildo, World Cup defender Nilton Santos, and forward Quarentinha who, like Gérson, had a fearsome left-foot. Botafogo was then managed by the popular but volatile João Saldanha who, when later manager of Brazil, picked Gérson for his World Cup squad for Mexico.

The star-studded team won the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A (the national club title and then one of the strongest leagues in the world, and maybe still is), finished in the top four (3 times), the Rio championship (4), the Rio-São Paulo tournament (3), and other competitions (Brazil has many) as well as finishing third in the Copa Libertadores in 1963.  Shortly after joining Botafogo however, he suffered a serious knee injury (one of many injuries that hampered his career) and which ruled him out of the 1962 World Cup finals. The injury was so serious it required surgery. Back in the early sixties this would have ended a sports career for many an athlete, perhaps even their ability to walk properly again but he recovered to be an integral part of one of Brazil’s biggest and most successful teams and eventually to become a world champion.  

Gerson was picked for the 1966 World Cup in England, along with other exciting newcomers including Tostão and Jairzinho. The bulk of the squad, however, were veterans of 1958 and 1962 World Cup winning teams and by then, past their best. Football dominance had shifted across the Atlantic and Brazil was humiliatingly outplayed by European opposition in the group stage beaten by Hunagary and Portugal, and winning just once against Bulgaria; a calamity called back in Brazil, the fracasso, the shame of 1966. Gérson played in just one match against Hungary and watched the Final back home in Rio while supporters rioted and burned effigies of the national team manager Vicente Feola, the long-term manager of São Paulo, and of João Havelange, the president of the Brazilian Football Federation (CBF).

The Europeans imagined they were watching the Brazilian era of World Cup dominance drawing to a close but Gérson would return to the tournament, a member of the best prepared team in the history of Brazilian – perhaps even, of world football. In the wake of the fracasso, Pelé swore never to play in a World Cup again but Havelange persuaded him to return with a promise of greatly improved preparation and a quite extraordinary appointment as the new coach. Gerson had seen two managers, Aymoré Moreira and Dorival Knippel (known as Yustrich), come and go before the diminutive Joâo Saldanha, his team coach at Botafogo, appointed to the top job.

Nicknamed “Fearless Joâo”, Saldanha was a journalist, writer, and a talk show host about football who had also played for Botafogo. Brazil has a culture of football journalists bordering on philosophers, held in high esteem and their articles collected for books. Saldanha wasn’t the only one who strayed into management. Another, Washington Rodrigues, once managed Flamengo, but he was the only one to be appointed national coach. He wanted goals and built his team around a midfield (or meio de campo) of Gérson, Wilson Piazza of Cruzeiro, and the heir apparent to Garrincha also from Botafogo, Jair Filho Ventura or Jairzinho on the right wing, Edu (Jonas Eduardo Américo) of Santos on the left side and Tostão (it means “Little Coin”) as the key supply link. Pelé, now back in the squad, would play centre-forward. He also brought in Gérson’s teammate Paulo Cézar Lima, and the rising star of Corinthians, Roberto Rivellino.

Gérson saw in Saldanha a kindred spirit, and the two became good friends. They were both opinionated about football, openly spoke their mind, and smoked like chimneys. Saldanha cut a somewhat emaciated figure and barely looked able to survive the goldfish bowl life of Brazil’s coach. He fused style with organisation and in Pelé and Tostão unearthed a goalscoring partnership. In six qualifying matches in August 1969 against South American opponents, Brazil scored 23 goals and conceded just two. Tostão scored 10 on his own and the last match against Paraguay, tough opponents, Brazil clinched their place in Mexico in front of 183,000 ecstatic fans at the Maracanã, the largest football stadium in the world.

While 1969 had been a barnstorming year for Brazil, 1970 turned into something quite different. Form deserted them. Tostão had suffered a serious eye injury and there were doubts he would ever play again. A series of poor performances in friendlies ahead of the World Cup saw Saldanha’s management called into question. Outspoken and political, he was also a lifelong communist sympathiser, which put him at odds with Brazil’s right-wing military dictatorship. The then dictator, General Emilio Garrastazu Médici, was a football fanatic. He was often seen at the Maracanã sitting alone on the terraces during matches watching the action with not a bodyguard in sight. He dabbled in team selection, something Saldanha resented, at times openly.

Médici was conscious of the unifying power of football (among other things like popular music) and created a public relations machine, the AERP (Assessoria Especial de Relaçoes Publica) to maximise positive messages about military rule. Utilising propaganda and the power of mass media, the explosion in the number of TV stations and television sets in Brazil during his rule (1969-74 – he was the second of three dictators during 21 years of military rule) saw Médici turned into the most famous face in Brazil after Pelé.

In early 1970, barely a year after being appointed, Saldanha was unceremoniously sacked as national team manager. Rumours abound as to the reasons for his dismissal. One was it was politically motivated. Having an articulate and outspoken communist sympathiser in charge of the national team for a World Cup the country’s right-wing military ruler said Brazil would win, thereby enhancing their public image, was widely thought of as the cause. Poor team selection was another reason. Saldanha’s volatility was yet another. After Flamengo’s coach publicly criticised him in the most brutal terms, Saldanha went looking for him with a loaded revolver. He regularly challenged journalists to fist fights. In the end he was dismissed by Brazilian chief of staff, Antonio do Passos, on the grounds that he was “emotionally unstable and not fit to continue in charge of the Brazilian players”. Fearful, he said, “we are walking over the same road that led this team to failure in England four years ago.” It was also rumoured Saldanha, a masterful manipulator of public opinion, was unable to reverse the team’s poor form in the lead-up to Mexico, so went looking for excuses and manufactured rumour and innuendo, something a skilled and experienced public commentator could do with ease.

Up stepped Mario Zagallo into the job, after two other coaches had turned the position down. The two-time World Cup winner (as a player) is regarded by some in Brazil as a wonder coach and by others as just lucky to be in the right place at the right time with a squad of some of the world’s best players. It was doubtless fitting testimony to Saldhanha that on the day he was appointed, a year earlier in February 1969, he announced two teams; his first team and his reserve team. The team that won the World Cup 16 months later in Mexico with Zagallo in charge was the first team Saldanha named that day, plus three players moved up from the reserves.

Preparation for Mexico involved military precision and rigorous training. The squad assembled in Rio where fitness director Claudio Coutinho (a retired artillery captain) introduced the players to the joys of the Cooper Test, a product of his visit to NASA and insights into the Apollo training programme. Versions of the test required players to run daily for a prescribed time, increasing the distance travelled each day and thereby their aerobic capacity. Several of the other players also smoked. The goalkeeper, Félix, smoked as much if not more than did Gérson. While the others, Fontana and the captain Carlos Alberto quit or cut down. Gérson refused, citing his nerves apparently, and continued to smoke his usual industrial quantity throughout the tournament.

One month before the tournament was due to begin the Brazilians arrived in Mexico to a secluded, well-guarded retreat near Guanajuato, 60 miles east of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city where their group stage matches would be played. At 1500m Guadalajara was lower than the capital, and the Jalisco Stadium was rumoured to have the best playing surface in the country, perfect for a playmaker extraordinaire like Gérson. The base was guarded round-the-clock by Mexican soldiers and by plain clothes police, and was what Brazilians called a concentração, rigidly disciplined training camps at which both clubs and international sides prepared for major matches and tournaments. Curfews, alcohol bans and isolation from wives and families had long since been accepted as a necessary evil. Yet the parallel with razor-wire and searchlights was never more appropriate than at Guanajuato where the squad began orientating to the local conditions at the beginning of early May 1970.

They had already been sleeping and training to Mexico time in Rio and the team chef was cooking local ingredients in Mexican oils. Then began altitude acclimatisation – the process of adapting to the decrease in oxygen concentration at a specific altitude takes time, sometimes a few days – was one thing. Heat acclimatisation was another factor. Brazilians would argue they would be well adapted coming from a largely tropical country. In Mexico, however, the games would be played at midday or early afternoon with no drinks’ breaks permitted, the schedule being run to suit FIFA rather than for players’ welfare. Gérson would struggle. Even the youthful Clodoaldo ran so much during Brazil’s games he would lose 4-5kgs per match and it was 24 hours before he could eat solids again.

Gérson arrived in Mexico with much work to do. He was 29, nearing the end of a career that had somehow failed to fulfil its early, infinite promise. Even more than Pelé, 1970 represented his last realistic chance to stamp his greatness on the world game. He was central to the tactics developed by Zagallo and senior players like Carlos Alberto, Piazza, and Pelé (called the Cobras by the masseur, Mario Americo). At the heart of the Brazilian game-plan would be tactics designed to create space for its fastest front men, Jairzinho nicknamed the Hurricane (or Furacão in Portuguese) and Pelé, who under Coutinho’s Cooper tests was returning to the best physical condition of his life. Gerson’s days were dominated by exercises in which he would practise the variety of long balls (lançamentos) he would need to use in Guadalajara. Pass after pass was aimed at small athletic hurdles up to 50m away on the edge of the penalty area, sometimes hundreds in a single session.

Then, 15 days before the opening match in Mexico against Czechoslovakia, Gérson broke down at training with a calf problem, though English journalists, probably hoping he would miss the game against England, reported this as a thigh strain. Thereafter he took limited part in training spending his time instead exercising in the swimming pool. He played in the first match against Czechoslovakia which Brazil won 4-1with a leg support and limped off 10 minutes before time. The next morning, he woke with a massive bruise on his leg. With two points safely won Zagallo decided to rest his playmaker with Paulo Cézar Lima (Caju) playing in the next two group matches against world champions England, and European up and comers, Rumania.

Gérson returned for the knockout stages. Firstly, against Peru and then the semi-final against Uruguay. The Napoleon of Niteroi as he was called by some, was Zagallo’s coach on the pitch. Brazil beat Peru in the quarter-final in Guadalajara 4-2 in what was described as the team at their artistic best. Arguably, they didn’t reach those heights again, even in the Final. Because of the attacking prowess of the Peruvians, it was a game where Pelé and Rivellino often dropped back to give Brazil a 4-4-2 formation. Largely because of the threat of Cubillas, the young star of the tournament, but also the baptism of fire from Gallardo, the winger from Sporting Cristal. But that was part of the magic of that Brazilian team, the senior players Gérson included, could change tactics on the pitch if they could see there was a problem, and adapt. Nevertheless, it was a game Brazil dominated throughout, and where their defence could relax, a situation that Peru could exploit, but without the hope of turning the match.

In the semi-final, the Uruguay team was built around the strongest defence in Latin America and in Ladislao Mazurkiewicz of Penarol, they had the continent’s best goalkeeper. For much of the game they played a defensive master-class operating with man-marking and packed the midfield leaving just one man, Morales, up in attack for much of the time. They scored first, Brazil’s worst nightmare of 20 years ago when the two teams last met in a World Cup match, the so-called Maracanaço -in Portuguese, (“The Agony of the Maracana”) when Brazil lost the 1950 Final, 2-1, reared its head. Gerson dismissed this hype around the match, and even after conceding the first goal rallied the team to win 3-1 to lay the national ghost to rest. Towards to end of the first-half, Gérson realised he wasn’t going to shake off the shackles of his man-marker Montero, and began encouraging Clodoaldo to venture forward in his place. In the last minute of injury time in the first-half, Clodoaldo exchanged passes with Tostão on the edge of Uruguay’s penalty area, and his immaculate right-foot volley left Mazurkiewicz powerless for once. Brazil was into the World Cup Final and it would be Gerson’s finest performance on the World Cup stage.

In the Final, Gérson admitted he was much happier to be playing the tactically rigid Italians than the more flexible Germans, who Italy beat 4-3 in the semi-final (with five goals scored in extra-time). “It would have been much more difficult for us to confront the German system and their talented players,” he admitted. For Gérson, Italy gifted him the space to operate by playing a two-man midfield of Giancarlo De Sisti (of Fiorentina) and Sandro Mazzola (Inter). The latter was preferred to his great rival, Gianni Rivera, the Milan captain and European Footballer of the Year, who sat on the bench. The first half finished one-all after Roberto Boninsegna cancelled out Pelé’s opening goal capitalising on a horrendous mistake by Clodoaldo. As if sensing his time had come, Gérson returned from his half-time cigarettes and took control of the rest of the match. Brazil won the match and earned the right to retain the Jules Rimet Trophy as winners for the third time. The rest the say is history.

Brazil’s performance in Mexico has been compared to a form of footballing jazz, improvised and extemporised to some secret, shared rhythm. In reality their games were masterpieces of classical musicianship with Gerson the conductor. The latter stages of the final against Italy represented Gerson’s command performance. When you watch Gérson in that match and the other games he played in the 1970 tournament, what is apparent is his range of passing; long, short, left and right, to the side and forward; and the delivery; instep, outside of the foot, fast looping, and along the deck. As soon as he got the ball, which was frequently, he looked for what was on and the players around him were already moving in anticipation. Everything was channelled through him, almost every Brazil move. He was captain of the ship and decided the course and the speed. The first thought of the players was “give him the ball”. The other thing readily apparent, was how much space he operated in, and how much time he had. Rushing in to close him down could be self-defeating; he would simply go around you or pass the ball onto to someone else unmarked, so the threat wasn’t contained. What the Italians tried to do was man mark those around him especially in the defensive third where the catenaccio, their rigid “Trap Door” (or the “Chain”) system operated most effectively. Ultimately, they failed.

The team returned to Brazil and a heroes’ welcome. They were paraded to a grateful nation, and the military government, through Brasilia, São Paulo and Rio on heavily guarded fire trucks. The celebrations in Gérson’s home city of Rio lasted two days with 1800 people injured and 44 killed. Gérson’s performance in Mexico once again drew the attention of the cash-flush Italian clubs. He would have made a lot of money, yet a move to Europe never seriously entered his head. Instead he moved to São Paulo and then back to Rio with Fluminense. He was called up for the 1974 squad and what would have been his third World Cup. By then he was 33, with his fitness fading and thoughts of retirement pressing, he declined selection. His decision not to travel to West Germany was purely a footballing one, and not motivated, like for others, by politics and opposition to military rule, the regime keen to exploit football further for political purposes. He thought it would be a campaign too far. “It was too much for me. I had played in the Brazilian championship which was very wearing [Brazil’s football season seemingly is without end due to all the various competitions and players can go for years without a break], I was out of condition and I was already thinking about stopping.”

After retiring from football, Gérson became a local government inspector, fiscal da prefeitura, like his father before him. Later, he moved to be sports secretary for the Niteroi City Authority based in an office across the street from Niteroi Beach, where he marshals his staff like he did the players on the pitch. When not working he is running Projecto Gérson, a scheme to provide underprivileged kids with free sports tuition, which he promotes independently from his government role. His thoughts on the current crop of Brazil’s players are less than flattering. “When I was a boy I would go and watch Garrincha or Didi. Today you go for what?” The Brazilian team that won the 1970 World Cup in Mexico were arguably the finest team to win the World Cup in the televised era and perhaps the greatest winning team of all time. They won in the first tournament broadcast internationally in colour by satellite to all points of the globe. Everyone saw everything. As Gérson said of that team then; “Our team was the best. Those who saw it, saw it. Those who didn’t will never see it again”.

Gérson, the Golden Left Foot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_tZGKP4Tnk
Gérson, World Cup 1970: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ZiQcv9uWo
The Great Didi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKlPlN4b-oU