Every Monday, FIFA spotlights a World Cup record. This looks at Brazil right-back Cafu becoming the only man to play in three finals.
Perhaps it would have made more sense for Celio and Cleusa to name their brood starting with the letter C. Instead they went ten ticks down the alphabet to M. Mara, Margareth, Marcelo, Mauricio, Mauro and Marcos. Marcos Evangelista de Moraes, one of six children who would grow up and become a C anyway.
The boy from the suburbs of Sao Paulo who, like a butterfly from a cocoon, emerged as Cafu. Named in honour of the right winger Cafuringa, a star of the domestic game in Brazil throughout the 1970s before he tragically died at the age of 42.
Famously born during the second half of Brazil’s group-stage tussle with England in Guadalajara during the 1970 FIFA World Cup™, Cafu would eventually become synonymous with the grandest stage of the global game. More than two decades after he stood on a wobbly plinth in Yokohama, clutching six kilograms of 18-karat gold above his head, Cafu remains the only man to have featured in three World Cup finals. It’s a record that owes plenty though to Jorginho, Brazil’s starting right-back at USA 1994.
Despite growing calls for the then 24-year-old to feature, Cafu only saw brief action off the bench in the round of 16 and quarter-final. When the teams were announced for the showpiece against Italy at the Rose Bowl, once again it was the Bayern Munich man lining up on the right of Brazil’s back four. Midway through the first half, though, and injury struck, Cafu being called on by Carlos Alberto Parreira and playing the remainder of a contest eventually settled on spot-kicks as Brazil won a fourth crown.
By the time that France 1998 arrived Cafu had become a Seleção regular and was well on the way to redefining the role of the marauding full-back, having being urged early in his career into a positional switch from a more advanced role by one of the great attacking evangelists, Tele Santana. Somewhat lost in the chaos of Ronaldo’s omission for the final was the return of Cafu, suspended for the semi-final but having started all five fixtures prior to that. It was a match that would end in disappointment, however, with a Zinedine Zidane-inspired France running out comfortable winners in Paris.
At club level, in the years between Paris and Yokohama, Cafu was a key part of the Roma side that won Serie A in 2001/02. There, he earned the nickname ‘Il Pendolino’ (‘The Express Train’), making it more than appropriate that he would become the first man to feature in three World Cup finals in the home of the shinkansen.
Having been stripped of the captaincy in the buildup to Korea/Japan 2002, he regained it after an injury to Emerson and led Brazil to three group-stage wins and then a further three in the knockout round, where only Michael Owen scored against the side en route to booking a decider against Germany.
Leading the Seleção out in Yokohama, history was made as a then 32-year-old Cafu became the first – and, to date, only – man to feature in three World Cup finals. After O Fenômeno’s two second-half strikes led Brazil to a fifth title, it was Cafu’s responsibility to lead the moment of acclaim.
A scene as dramatic as it was joyous; Pele holding the World Cup trophy before Cafu risked life and limb to scurry up the stand intended as its perch.
There, he flung his winner’s medal over the back of his shirt to reveal a scrawled message on the front that read ‘100% Jardim Irene’, the name of the Sao Paulo district where he was raised.
It’s an image that remains frozen in time, capturing the wide smile of the boy from the favela who rose to become one of his nation’s – and the game’s – greats. The only player to feature in three finals and still the last Brazilian captain to lift the World Cup trophy.
