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Ze Carlos an unlikely starter for Brazil
Cafu's absence pushes 'The Peasant' into starting lineup
Posted: Tuesday July 07, 1998 09:40 AM
Special from L'Equipe, the French sports daily PARIS
(L'Equipe) -- On a team of stars, a 29-year-old nobody nicknamed "the
peasant" is going to play in a World Cup semifinal. Zé Carlos was not
tired, he wasn't in pain, but he belonged in Brazil's locker
room. It was 11 p.m., and Brazil's quarterfinal win over Denmark had
left him stressed out. Zé Carlos knows his status on the team, but he
didn't know that something that had happened during the match was going to
give his career a new dimension. "I didn't realize that Cafu would be
suspended for the next match when he got a second yellow card in two
matches, and that it would be my turn," Zé Carlos said. Later, coach
Mario Zagallo told journalists that Cafu's "natural replacement" was Zé
Carlos. At the beginning of the World Cup, this "clown" imitated animals
when Brazilian journalists asked him, and even woke up his teammates by
doing the rooster. He stopped, following advice from his teammates, and
now, with his upcoming responsibilities, he definitely isn't making anybody
laugh anymore. This player, whose nickname is "o caipira," the peasant,
comes from a rough part of the country, southeast of the State of Sao
Paulo, in Presidente Bernardes, a small town on the border of Mato Grosso
do Sul. His parents went from farm to farm, and he started working at an
early age. He sold fruit, worked as a steelworker and in a bank. He
worked and played, and eight years ago he started working on playing. He
started in Sao José, and played for various teams, most of them around Sao
Paulo. He still was a banal midfielder.
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Ze Carlos has not started a match yet for Brazil, but he'll be thrown into the fire against the Dutch (AP) |
But in 1996, Uniao Sao Joan
bought his contract from Portuguese for peanuts, and loaned him to Matonese
a year later for the second part of the first division championship. The
team had jumped from the fourth to first division in three seasons, and Zé
Carlos was still a benchwarmer. He finally went in, on the right flank of
the defense, and he never went back on the bench. The 5-foot-7, 154-lb
player had finally found his place. There was a shortage of players at his
position, in Brazil, Palmeiras even buying Paraguay's
Francisco Arce for $5 million. A poorer but more prestigious team, FC Sao
Paulo, got Zé Carlos for three times less money. That was enough for
Zagallo to get interested in this "relaxed player gifted with great
athletic skills." He first called him up on March 25 against Germany. With
three months to go before the World Cup, after Flavio Conceiçao's exclusion
from the team for disciplinary problems, and with Zé Mario out of shape,
Zagallo needed a backup for Cafu. The only problem concerned his age. He
said he was 27 to be taken, but Zagallo checked and discovered he was 29.
So Zagallo made him come early "so that he be ready just in case." The
substitute workhorse, Zé Carlos only played in the 1-1 tie against
Atletico Bilbao, so the semifinal against the Netherlands
is going to be his first official match for Brazil. "I know that I'm going
to have a lot of work. Even with Numan suspended and Bogarde injured. I've
watched the Netherlands but I'm going to get concerned only with my game,"
he said. He's not going to imitate anyone, it's going to be his game,
not Cafu's. The two of them talked about it. "The whole world is going to
be watching, you must be tranquil. A lot of things are more important in
life, you just need to develop your game," Cafu told him. It's a unique
occasion, but the poorest player on the Brazilian squad, who's just signed
his first shoe contract, stays down to earth. "It's not the biggest day of
my life. Or else I've lived the day of my life everyday for a long time,"
Zé Carlos said.
Copyright 1998, L'Equipe
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