This article from 20+ years caught my attention!

ASHOOR

Administrator
Staff member
I was curious if Pele had ever coached in his life (didn’t think so) and as I was searching, I came across this article from summer 2002, after Brazil had won the World Cup , in which Scholari blasts Pele for his criticism of the team and not giving them a chance


To quote from the article:

“ In May, just weeks before the tournament began, Pele, a World Cup winner in 1958, ’62 and ‘70, said he did not believe Brazil had a chance to win the title. “[Brazil’s players] are not at their best at the moment, and I do not think they will have a good World Cup,” he said. “I think the favorites are Argentina, France, Italy and Portugal.”

Argentina, France and Portugal were eliminated in the first round.”

Then it hit me and how with hindsight, we think the 2002 was so great, it was destined to win even before they started their campaign. In fact, as we recently discussed, none of the big 3 guns were doing great prior to the tournament and we just take it for granted since they did go on to have a great cup together.
 
I know it sounds racist but Pele never coached because he was black. Mind you, the man himself said he would never coach the national team because there is too much politics (you need to have a certain number of players from Rio and a certain number of players from Sao Paulo, etc). But if you noticed, Brazil has never had a black coach and even their club sides, rarely do you see black coaches. Vava who won the 1958 and 1962 World Cups with Brazil coached Peru in the 1970 World Cup (and they were knocked out by Brazil) but never had much of a coaching career inside his own country.

As for Pele's predictions, he had a terrible record. Before Italia90, he said to watch out for the Zebras (Austria's uniform was black and white like Juventus and they also did not make the second round. Great player but terrible at predicting outcomes.
 
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