In the first half of the Brazilian game against England, at the 1970 World Cup, when a ball was crossed in the Brazilian area, narrator Geraldo José de Almeida described the goalkeeper’s action in the bid saying a “Sai that is his, Felix”.
In the 1990s, the staff would be famous in the voice of Galvão Bueno with “Sai that is yours, Taffarel”. But the stretch of narration shown on Brazilian television during the 1970 World Cup broadcast only returned to light now, 55 years later.
The discovery of the audios happened by chance this year. “I contacted a person who claimed to have a part of the TV Tupi collection. As this person does not know football, he separated a material and gave me a lot of things. In the middle of all this had these 1970 World Cup games. It was a surprise to me,” says journalist, writer and researcher Thiago Uberreich, who is the author of the book “1970: Brazil is TRI”, 2020.
For Uberreich, these narrations are a kind of holy grail of collectors. “I think the public doesn’t have much of how rare this is,” he says. The phrase “goes that is yours, Felix”, according to the researcher, is one of those he rescued among the unpublished, only heard even live by those who followed the championship.
Played in Mexico, the 1970 World Cup was the first to be broadcast live on television to Brazil. At the time, there was still no VCR, so viewers could not record what was going on in the TV.
Although the images of the World Cup are well known, the original narrations were stored by Globo, Record, Bandeirantes and Tupi, the four broadcasters that formed a “pool” to broadcast that World Cup through the Brazilian television network.
Since then, only excerpts from these narrations have been exhibited, generally on TV Cultura. Usually the TRI’s bids are repressed with narrations made later, or using radio audio.
The material rescued by Thiago Uberreich includes almost all of Brazil’s games in the World Cup. The main exception is the narration of the first half of the quarterfinals against Peru, of which there is no trace.
“In this material that arrived from TV Tupi we have half an hour of post-game [da final]including the original closing vignette in the voice of Cid Moreira. We already knew the opening vignette, but the closing no one knew. So that’s the rarity, “says Uberreich.
During the matches, products from the three companies that sponsored the broadcast – Goglette, Esso and Souza Cruz – were announced by the narrators. Geraldo José de Almeida pronounced “H” silent, transforming the sound of Hollywood cigarettes into “Oliúde”.
Former Globo Director-General Walter Clark told in the book “The Champion of Audience” that, in the negotiation made in Mexico for the rights of transmission of the World Cup, Magnata Emilio Azcárraga Milmo was irreducible with the proposal of the Brazilian delegation.
According to Clark, everything changed when Paulo César Ferreira, known to his colleagues as Tarzan, punched the table and said that if the World Cup was not transmitted to Brazil, the team would not go to Mexico to dispute it. Tarzan had no power to define the direction of the national team, but the bluff made Azcárraga Milmo Ceder.
As there was only one audio signal available for TV channels, the solution was to display the same narration in all broadcasters, with the relay of narrators Fernando Solera, Geraldo José de Almeida, Walter Abrahão and Oduvaldo Cozzi alongside commentators João Saldanha, Rui Porto, Geraldo Bretas and Leonidas da Silva.
“I was asked on social networks who narrated the most goals in Brazil. Solera narrated seven, Geraldo José narrated six, Walter Abrahão, three, and Cozzi, three,” says Uberreich.
The researcher is promoting the original narrations synchronizing them with the colorful images, as the World Cup was transmitted in black and white to Brazil.
“There is the Brazilian citizen Carlos Alberto Torres receiving [a taça Jules Rimet] of his excellence, the ordinary president of the Ordaz. And this kiss you gave, Carlinhos, was the kiss of the whole of Brazil in this cup that is no one else, it will not be anybody because it is ours, “narrated Geraldo José de Almeida.
In the post-game of TRI, all narrators and commentators, as well as other team members, spoke to the microphone. Oduvaldo Cozzi, who said goodbye to the narration, was honored by his colleagues.
“When I passed these audios to one of Oduvaldo Cozzi’s daughter, the family was ecstatic,” says Uberreich.
Coach of the national team until March of that year, João Saldanha showed no grudge in his words in that remarkable June 21, 1970.
“Never has a World Cup been as deserved as this,” said Saldanha. “Thank you very much, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” thanked Geraldo José in the broadcast.
