OLIVER HOLT: Brazil's 1970 World Cup heroes feel dishonoured

It has edged past 1pm in Rancho Portugues, an elegant, traditional old restaurant in the Lagoa suburb of Rio de Janeiro. We’re sitting at a table — my friend Eduardo and I — watching the door. Every time it opens, we think it’s going to be him, but it never is. When it gets to 1.30pm, Eduardo calls him on his mobile. Jairzinho picks up.

Eduardo, who is acting as my fixer and translator, tells him we’re waiting for him at the restaurant. The man who scored in every game he played at the 1970 World Cup and was Brazil’s hero in the tournament every bit as much as Pele, says he is on his way to Barra da Tijuca, out to the west of the city. He’s going to a barbeque with friends. Eduardo asks him about our lunch. He says he forgot.

This is not one of those long stories about a quest for an interview and whether it happened in the end. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. I wish it had because Jairzinho is one of football’s great heroes. It would have been an honour to meet him and to talk to him. We tried to resurrect the meeting a couple of times in the next few days but Jairzinho was full of resentment about not being valued. Then Eduardo tested positive for Covid and we did not try again.

I went back to my hotel and watched some more of the footage of Jairzinho at the 1970 tournament in Mexico. He was extraordinary. Unstoppable. His second goal in Brazil’s group game against Czechoslovakia was a masterpiece; a brilliant dribble evading first one defender and then another, riding tackles until he got to the edge of the area and unleashed a fierce cross shot that flew beyond the goalkeeper into the bottom corner of the net.

Against England, in another group game, it was his run and cross that set up Pele for the header that was