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The Soccer Dictator – A brief look at General Médici’s interference at the 1970 World Cup

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Fifty years ago, Brazil’s display in the opening game of the 1970 World Cup consecrated the universal brand of the country of soccer, but, at the same time, one of the most enchanting national teams of all times also contributed to normalizing the most repressive and bloodthirsty period of the military dictatorship.

Brazil are usually among the favorites to win the World Cup when you look at the pre-tournament markets among the offshore betting sites, but there was so much more to their 1970 campaign than simply what the players were able to put together on the field.

At that time, soccer and politics were closely linked. When General Emílio Garrastazu Médici came to power in October 1969, the national team was led by journalist and notorious communist militant João Saldanha. Two months before the World Cup, however, he was dismissed from his post, accusing the government of having asked for his head because of his opposition to the military regime.

The physical condition of some players, like Pelé, on the verge of 30, was a cause for concern. Besides this, there was the altitude factor in Mexico, home of the World Cup.

More than a month before the opening game, the entire delegation traveled to the city of Guanajuato, near Guadalajara, where the team would play in the group phase, and concentrated at more than 2,000 meters with the intention of acclimating the squad to the rarefied air. The work was coordinated by a militarized technical commission, led by coach Cláudio Coutinho, an Army captain who would become the team’s coach in the 1970s.

General Médici liked soccer and, more than that, he saw in the first World Cup to be broadcast live on TV in the country the opportunity to overshadow the hardening of repression in the beginning of his government.

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Making use of aggressive campaigns, especially the jingle “Pra frente Brasil” (Forward Brazil!), Médici stuck his image on the national team by evoking the patriotism of rooting for the national team. Not satisfied, he even forced interference in the team.

Under the guidance of Zagallo, the team followed a rigorous fitness regime and went undefeated in the tournament, scoring 63% of its goals in the second half. Two of them in the semifinal against the Uruguayans, who complained about the sudden change in the venue of the match, initially planned for Mexico City, but moved the day before to Guadalajara, 1,560 meters above sea level, where Brazil had played all its matches until then.

The only match played in the Mexican capital, 2,250 meters above sea level, was against Italy in the final. The 4-1 thrashing yielded a third World Cup title for the national team, which would return to the country with the status, at least for the government, of informal ambassador of the dictatorship.

Carlos Alberto Torres, the captain of the team, was the author of the last Brazilian goal in the World Cup, a gut-wrenching shot that extinguished the Italians’ hopes. He was responsible for handing the cup to Médici, in the traditional reception to the world champions.

After the meeting and lunch at the dictator’s palace, where each member of the delegation received as a gift from the Government a prize deposited in a savings account, some players developed an intimate relationship with Médici, such as the star right-winger, who would even receive a Christmas card from the president in the year of the three-time championship.

“I served the Brazilian national team”, said Carlos Alberto, in an interview to the program Roda Viva, in 1988, when denying deference to the military regime. “At that time, I was still very young and only wanted to know about soccer.”

The greatest Brazilian athlete in history, Pelé also posed smiling for pictures with Médici in Brasilia. In the same year, the King would also head a diplomatic committee to represent the military government in the inauguration of a square in Guadalajara.

He rejects the stigma of being a poster boy for the regime, remembering having been on the cover of a famous magazine wearing a shirt supporting the new democratic elections in 1984, when the country no longer lived in the atmosphere of fear imposed by dictatorship.

When justifying the change in posture, Pelé, who had already ended his career as a player, recognized that he was aware of the dictator’s opportunism. However, because of his status as a world star, he was obliged to play the power game.

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