anxious to copy the Dutch

Zico's playing career

Born: 3 March 1953, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Position: Attacking midfielder

Club record:

Year - Team - Apps - Goals

1971-1983 - Flamengo - 212 - 123

1983-1985 - Udinese - 39 - 22

1985-1989 - Flamengo - 37 - 12

1991-1994 - K Antlers - 46 - 35

National record:

1976-1986 - Brazil - 71 - 48

"But if I hadn't taken it then it would have been Socrates. When the match went to a shootout, he missed, and I scored."

Brazil lost and Zico's last chance as a player at the World Cup had gone.

His first shot at the trophy had come eight years earlier, in Argentina. The "New Pele" was surrounded by intense hype - it was hard to live up to the expectations on a Buenos Aires pitch so poor it was coming away in clumps.

Harder still when he thought he had headed a last-gasp winner in the opening game against Sweden, only for it to be disallowed because Welsh referee Clive Thomas had bizarrely blown for full-time while the ball was in flight.

Perhaps the main problem, though, was one of ideas. "All of us Brazilians got carried away with the great football that Netherlands had presented in 1974, with the players carrying out lots of functions, and our coach Claudio Coutinho wanted, in a short space of time, Brazilians to play in the same way. It wasn't possible," he said.

"The players, anxious to copy the Dutch, ended up forgetting the technique, quality and improvisation which is Brazilian football."

There were no such problems four years later, in Spain 1982, when Zico and his generation gave their definitive statement as international footballers.

Shot down by Paolo Rossi's Italy in one of the greatest World Cup games, Brazil did not even reach the semi-finals. Even so, as Zico says, "everywhere I go people talk about that team. They know the line-up by heart".

Seldom if ever in the history of the game has the ball been treated better than it was by the midfield of Falcao, Toninho Cerezo, Socrates and Zico.

Play media