In his soccer school in Morumbi, nestling by an enormous C&A store and close to the stadium he used to grace, Rivelino painted a depressing scenario for the future of Brazilian football. The star of the 1970 golden team hailed the current national side as the worst in the country’s history and said only Luiz Felipe Scolari could mend the wounds.

”It’s sad in terms of quality of the players and it’s sad in terms of violence,” he said. “I played in Sao Paulo for 20 years and it’s in my blood, but when I turn on the TV now to watch a game, I change channels. The standard is so poor.”

It is a damning appraisal from a legend and, according to Rivelino, the national team is a symbol of the decline and fall. He no longer goes to club games, but he watched the World Cup and was appalled by what he saw. “Brazil left through the back door,” he said. “It was shameful. Terrible. They had no tactics, thought they could just turn up and not train, and the whole thing was lamentable.

”I like players who excite me, the ones who can be creative. But we don’t have the individual talents anymore. We are more focused on the physical side of things. People here get excited about players and I can’t understand it.”

The move to appoint Dunga as the national coach gives him little ground for optimism. “Only in Brazil could they choose a player with no experience who has never trained a team and put him in charge of the national side,” Rivelino said. The man he likes is Scolari, the former Palmeiras coach and occasional visitor to his Sao Paulo restaurant.

“Believe me, England should have made much more of an effort to get him. He is a great man. I like the way he thinks and the way he works. He calls a spade a spade and if he punches someone then he deserved it.”

Rivelino has grave fears for the world game in general, pointing out that the best players at the past two World Cups have been a centre-half and a goalkeeper. “There are problems everywhere. I saw something on TV about corruption in England. I watch Juventus demoted. I saw someone in Seville throw a bottle on a bus. The whole game is rotten.”

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