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Neymar will easily beat Pele’s record: Zico
KOLKATA: Zico pulls no punches. Be it about the Indian Super League (ISL), where he is FC Goa’s coach for the third successive season, Neymar, Tite’s appointment
KOLKATA: Zico pulls no punches. Be it about the Indian Super League (ISL), where he is FC Goa’s coach for the third successive season, Neymar, Tite’s appointment as Brazil coach or Argentina’s dependence on Lionel Messi. That’s what you get from football’s most famous four-letter word without a World Cup title; one who is immortalised in bronze in Kashima, Japan, has a statue at Rio’s Flamengo football club and another at the Maracana.
Nine days after Neymar overtook him as Brazil’s fourth-highest scorer with 49 goals, Zico told HT here on Saturday that the Barcelona star would easily beat Pele’s feat of 77 international goals, the highest by a Brazilian.
“For sure, he will,” said Zico, his gravelly voice rising as he elaborated on the answer through an interpreter.
“He will get much more games. In my case, we would get only six World Cup qualifiers. Six. Then again, there are so many friendlies. You can play against teams such as Gabon, Haiti. We would play a lot of games but they would be with teams within Brazil or against club sides in Milan, Madrid.” In a 10-year international career, Zico played 71 games and scored 48 goals. Having debuted for Brazil on August 10, 2010, Neymar, 24, has played 73. Pele’s record came in 92 games.
TITE’S REIGN
Asked about Brazil’s turnaround under new coach Tite — with four successive wins since September 1, they are on top of the World Cup’s South America qualifiers with 21 points from 10 games — Zico said: “Since 2012, Tite has been the best coach in Brazil. And that means he is more prepared.”
Tite, 55, succeeded Dunga as coach who himself had replaced Luiz Felipe Scolari after the disastrous 2014 World Cup. And when the conversation shifted to Neymar’s more famous teammate at Barcelona, Zico said there is no reason for Argentina to depend so much on Messi. Sounding incredulous and moving his arms to make the point, Zico said: “That’s my opinion. They shouldn’t be (depending on Messi). A team that has Aguero, Lavezzi, Higuain, Di Maria, Mascherano, shouldn’t.” If they lose when Messi’s not around, well it’s because “that’s football”, he said, with a shrug.
Zico termed the ISL as the beginning of something positive but said it isn’t worthy of comparison with the early days of the J-League. Firstly, the J-League was the only league in Japan, he said. “And each team was allowed three foreigners. You had to bring three foreigners who could make the difference, who were so good that Japanese footballers could learn from them.”
The ISL allows 11 imports in the squad and the difference between most of them and Indians isn’t much, said Zico.
Even though Zico was 40 when he played for Kashima Antlers in the first season of the J-League, most of the marquee imports in Japan were younger. Gary Lineker was 32, Salvatore Schillaci was 30, Dejan Stoichkov 29 and Ramon Diaz 34. At 28, Mohamed Sissoko is the youngest ISL marquee ever but before him it was Elano Blumer and Helder Postiga who were 33 last year.
