UK Edition
Zico: 'Liverpool underestimated Flamengo in 1981 and Europe's best team paid the ultimate price'
Zico still drives the car he was awarded as man-of-the-match when Flamengo beat Liverpool 38 years ago, but it is not the thing he most treasures from that day.
Better than the 1981 Toyota Celica that took nearly a year and a half to arrive in Brazil is the memory of defeating the European champions on a global stage.
“Liverpool were the best team in Europe and they continued being so,” Zico says of his team’s 3-0 Intercontinental Cup win over Bob Paisley’s side in Tokyo. “They had high-quality players, great technical ability, but Flamengo played much better football and maybe they didn’t expect we would be so strong.”
While the tournament now known as the Club World Cup - in which Liverpool and Flamengo will meet again in Saturday's final – has often been seen as an irritant by European clubs, it is viewed very differently in South America. “It’s the most important title Flamengo have won,” Zico says. “It’s the highest honour a club can win.”
So what did he think about Graeme Souness’s less-than-flattering recollections of the event? The Scot said that Liverpool’s players got drunk on the flight to Japan and were told by assistant manager Joe Fagan: “This game is not that important, so don’t get injured.”
Zico is not impressed. “I never knew this,” he says with a hint of irritation in his voice. “It’s their problem, not ours. I’m not interested in what they did or didn’t do on the plane. But I don’t believe any player goes into a game wanting to lose.”
The match seemed an otherworldly affair to UK viewers, contested on a dry pitch that threw up clouds of dust with each shot on goal, and with a continuous, strange buzzing noise in the background. For many, it also offered a first glimpse of some of the Brazilian players who would light up the World Cup the following year, with full-backs Leandro and Junior joining Zico in giving the world a taste of what was to come in Spain.
Zico, then 28, was man-of-the-match, creating two goals for Nunes – the big No 9 who Flamengo fans gleefully recall seemed more like an English forward than a Brazilian one – and striking a free-kick that Bruce Grobbelaar spilled for Adilio to fire home.
Souness said Zico was the best player he ever faced. “I wanted to see how he would react to a physical challenge, but I couldn’t get close enough to him to find out," he said. Kenny Dalglish was utterly eclipsed by the mop-haired Brazilian.
Zico and Nunes were presented with the cars by match sponsor Toyota, but the vehicles did not make it through Brazil’s labyrinth import regime until March 1983 – and Zico moved to Udinese in Italy a few months later. But he has lovingly taken care of the Celica. “I have it at home and it’s in good working condition,” he says. “I still take it out from time to time.”
It certainly helped that Flamengo were, according to Zico, better prepared than Liverpool. “Our fitness coach Claudio Coutinho had an assistant who knew everything about European football and he passed on all the information about Liverpool to us. We knew how they would play, their formation, and maybe this was a problem for them, maybe they didn’t have this kind of information about us.
“Today, with globalisation, it’s easier. Everyone knows how everyone plays. I live in Japan (Zico is technical director with Kashima Antlers) and I watch the top leagues from all over the world. But back then you had to do much more research.”
What about the suggestion that European teams have historically cared little for the tournament? “I don’t believe this,” Zico says. “I think when the teams arrive they want to win. And also the European teams are in better condition – it’s in the middle of their season, while for us it’s at the end. They are at their peak.”
The victory sparked large-scale celebrations in Brazil where Flamengo, seven-times national champions, are said to have more than 30 million fans. “There was great joy, a huge party, as Brazilians do,” said Zico. “I went to Hawaii, Las Vegas and New York, and then we had another big party in January after the first game of the state championship.”
The triumph remains burned into the minds of Flamengo fans. After their stunning late win over Argentina’s River Plate in the Copa Libertadores final in Lima last month, a video went viral of Flamengo fans in the stadium singing about “beating Liverpool 3-0 in 1981” moments before Gabriel Barbosa fired in the injury-time winner.
Barbosa, on loan from Inter Milan, will be the main threat as the current crop – considered by many the best Flamengo side since the class of ‘81 – try to emulate Zico and Co by beating Liverpool in Doha.
Zico believes the two sides have "the same philosophy”. “Both play to score,” he says. “[Jürgen] Klopp has turned Liverpool into maybe the best team in Europe and their front three – [Mohamed] Salah, [Roberto] Firmino and [Sadio] Mané – are the best in the world. But this Flamengo team are exceptional too.”
So who does Zico think will win? “Oh man, what do you think I’m going to say? Flamengo of course!”