The Hindu : Legends: Jairzinho

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 11, 2002

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Sport - Football

Legends: Jairzinho

The 1960s brought to fore some of the most outstanding football talents from Brazil, leading with the incomparable Pele.

May be brilliance of the `Black Pearl' was to deflect from the merits of most others a little bit but there were exceptional talents like Jairzinho, considered Garrincha II for the way he was to develop great bursts of speed and shoot with telling power.

There was no question Jairzinho played a big role in the success of Pele and Brazil in that famous 1970 World Cup.

Playing alongside Pele and Tostao, this right wing midfielder was to score a goal in every match Brazil played, a unique achievement.

That should explain how opponents wary about Pele had often ended up facing a torrid time from unexpected quarters.

Perhaps one of the greatest moments in Jairzinho's career came in the match against England.

Not surprisingly, every Brazilian saw that encounter as a grudge match because of how the country was shown the exit four years earlier in England.

Besides England was the reigning champion.

With Gordon Banks having earned a huge reputation for his goalkeeping, enhancing it further in that match with that famous `save of the century' to deflect a Pele header, the ground work for which was done by Jairzinho, Brazil needed to do something extraordinary.

And Pele was to prompt Jairzinho to do just that. When Pele put the ball in the path of a charging Jairzinho, the crafty player had only a narrow angle to test Banks but still beat the Englishman to help Brazil win the match.

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1944 as Jair Venture Filho, `Jairzinho' became his nickname as he entered the football stream. As a 13-year old itself he had been roped in by Botafogo club which also had the services of Garrincha around the same time.

In fact he began for Botafogo as left winger and also centre forward, before an injury to Garrincha brought him to the right.

For 17 years he remained with his first club and when 20 made his international debut against Portugal.

In all he had 83 international caps and scored 38 goals, having figured in three World Cups _ 1966, 1970 and 1974.

After an uneventful World Cup debut in England, Jairzinho flowered into a sensational player in Mexico, four years later.

The greatest compliment he earned was in the final against Italy when his explosive and dangerous abilities came in for special check by the noted full back Facchetti.

That Jairzinho could disentangle himself and even score past Albertosi was one of the highlights of that final, something that made experts rate him as one of the greatest wingers in world football.

In the 1974 edition, Jairzinho had lost some of his illustrious contemporaries like Tostao, Pele and Gerson and it was the World Cup when total football had caught the imagination of all, in particular the Germans and Dutch.

Brazil could not match them and even Jairzinho was starved of goal scoring opportunities.

Just one goal in the whole tournament reflected the dipping graph of the Brazilian's striking abilities. But then he had done enough. His amazing ball control, the ability to snare a rival away for his colleagues to exploit the free space apart from his power-packed drives made him a great footballer. — S.R. Suryanarayan

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