Death of a Forgotten Legend

History tends to deal exclusively with the successful. They are often the ones given prominence with the rest being relegated to mere footnotes irrespective of how vital their contribution. It is only by looking at the human element behind every story that real heroes start to emerge.

The news of Paulo Amaral’s death got very little mention in Brazil and almost none at all in Italy. Yet he played a crucial role in both countries’ footballing history.

Officially, Amaral was called in to help in the physical preparation of the two-time World Cup winning Brazilian teams of 1958 and 1962. Qualified in physical education and a huge athletics’ enthusiast, his methods were common practice in his favourite sport but nothing short of revolutionary in the football world of the 1950s. where he had initially been invited to work by Pirillo at Botofogo in 1957.

It was at Botofogo, upon the request of coach Pirillo, that he started out in 1957 but his popularity soon spread out. A year later he made his way to Sweden with the national team where Pele and many of the side’s young players quickly became fans of his methods.

Unofficially, the rumour is that it wasn’t simply the players’ bodies that he took care of: Amaral is said to have been the one who prepared the team tactically even if the coaches of the sides were Vicente Feola and Aimoré Moreira.

Whatever the truth, in 1962 he did take up a managerial role at Juventus where he had been chosen by the then head of Fiat, Vittore Catella. It wasn’t a popular appointment and Amaral was massacred by the critics yet in his outlook on how the game should be played there was Amaral’s main redeeming feature.

The Brazilian was one of the pioneers of zonal marking, and wanted his teams to press and play entertaining football, a philosophy that went against that of the most successful Italian teams of the era, the catenaccio obsessed Inter side of Helenio Herrera and the AC Milan one of Nereo Rocco.

And he almost succeeded. Up till the end of his first season his technically inferior side fought hard to win the title, pulled forward by the talent of Omar Sivori – with whom Amaral worked his magic and got motivated enough to train hard – and the raw power of Brazilian striker Miranda. Yet they didn’t make it, ultimately falling away to finish third.

That was to be as good as it got for him. A year later he was sacked and, after an unsuccessful year with Genoa, he was off to Porto before returning home to Brazil.

Thirty years later, another man tried his luck with a similar system to that adopted by Amaral. His name was Arrigo Sacchi and, having been considerably more successful, he has gone down as one of the games visionary. Amaral, on the other hand, will have to make do with the tag of the Physical Education teacher who went on to coach Juventus, a footnote in the history of the game for all apart from those willing to look closer.

Paulo Amaral: 1924 - 2008

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