RIO DE JANEIRO: Legendary Brazilian World Cup winning player and coach Jorge Mario Lobo Zagallo has been admitted to hospital in Rio de Janeiro with a respiratory infection.

Zagallo, 90, was admitted to the Barra D’Or Hospital on Tuesday night “for treatment of a respiratory infection and is under medical care , lucid and breathing spontaneously without the help of apparatus,” according to a clinic statement.

A test for Covid-19 was negatuve.

In a recent poll among 100 coaches on who was the best coach in the history of Brazilian football, Zagallo finished second, behind Tele Santana, who with the national team did not win the world title.

Zagallo, 91 on August 9, was born in 1931 in the impoverished state of Alagoas, was crowned a World Cup champion as a left winger in the World Cups in Sweden 1958 and Chile 1962, as coach in Mexico 1970 and as technical coordinator in the United States in 1994.

The only final he lost, of the five in which he was as a player, coach or coordinator, was the 1998 World Cup in France, in which the hosts beat Brazil, coached by Zagallo.

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