- The Brazilian Report
- Posts
- 🏆 The ‘perfect’ football team, 55 years on
🏆 The ‘perfect’ football team, 55 years on
The Brazil team that won the 1970 World Cup is adored for its technical skill and style, but its physical preparation set an example to be followed for the rest of football’s history
Euan Marshall
June 21, 2025
WORLD CUP
55 years of 1970: The prose behind the poetry
Brazil’s Jairzinho scores the team’s third goal in their 4-1 World Cup final victory over Italy. Photo: CBF
Celebrated Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini once said that Brazil’s win over Italy in the 1970 World Cup final, exactly 55 years ago, represented the triumph of poetry over prose. Despite conjuring an enchanting image of free-flowing and free-thinking Brazilian football stars running rings around rigid Italians, Pasolini was wrong.
For all of its beauty and mystique, the success of Brazil’s 1970 World Cup-winning side had its foundations in cold, hard science — and perhaps no football team before or since has been more physically prepared for a single tournament.
While nowadays, international teams preparing for World Cups get a few weeks with their squads to train ahead of the tournament, Brazil’s build-up to the 1970 World Cup in Mexico was a matter of national mobilization…
🔒 This was a free preview; the rest is behind our paywall
Don’t miss out! Upgrade to unlock full access. The process takes only seconds with Apple Pay or Stripe. Become a member.
Why you should subscribe
We’re here for readers who want to truly understand Brazil and Latin America — a region too often ignored or misrepresented by the international media.
Since 2017, our reporting has been powered by paid subscribers. They’re the reason we can keep a full-time team of 10 journalists across Brazil and Argentina, delivering sharp, independent coverage every day.
If you value our work, subscribing is the best way to keep it going — and growing.
Our annual plan goes for just USD 0.52 a day — but the value you'll get back from it is truly immeasurable. So… what’s stopping you from joining right now?
Reply