Zizinho
He played his first international match on January 17, 1942 in a 2-1 loss against Argentina at the 1942 South American Championship. On February 3, 1946, he led the Brazilian team onto the field for the first time as captain, scoring 4 goals in a 5-1 win over Chile. Overall, he acted 18 times as captain. He also scored 2 goals in Brazil's highest international victory, the 10-1 win over Bolivia on April 10, 1949. After taking the first international prize with the Brazilian national team in 1949 in the form of the Copa America, Zizinho made his appearance at the 1950 FIFA World Cup. Brazil hosted the tournament in its own country and built the Maracanã, at the time the largest stadium in the world, especially for this purpose. The host country played a good tournament with Zizinho as the star. The Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport described Zizinho as the footballing Leonardo da Vinci: "he created works of art with his feet on the immense field of the Maracanã". Sports journalist Hugo Meisl wrote after the match between Brazil and Spain: "We are not talking about simply a good footballer who you meet in various parts of the world. This is a genius. A man who has all the qualities that a footballer wishes to approach perfection." The divine Canaries reached the final, but the nearly 175,000 in attendance at the Maracanã saw Brazil lose 2-1 to Uruguay, which had been previously favorited. Although Zizinho was named the best player of the World Cup afterwards, the tournament was the biggest disappointment of his career but he was not blamed for the defeat at all. Years later, Zizinho indicated that he had never been able to handle the disappointment about the lost final. After the World Cup, Zizinho toyed with the idea of ​​giving up football altogether. However, he came back to this. After three years of absence, he also returned to the Brazilian selection in 1953. During that period, however, he came into conflict with columnist Jose Lins do Rego, who criticized the Brazilian players after they lost the final of the Campeonato Sul-Americano. Zizinho parried the criticism, but it is said that his outspokenness cost him his participation in the 1954 World Cup as he was not invited by national team coach Zezé Moreira. This sparked a national debate in Brazil, but the exact reasons Zizinho was not called up have never been revealed. In 1958, when Zizinho was 36 years old, he was selected to participate four days before Brazil was to travel to Sweden for the 1958 World Cup. However, he declined and said afterwards: "I couldn't accept it. I wasn't the youngest anymore. It wouldn't have been right because there were already players in training. I just regret that I was never able to realize my wish to play with Pele". Zizinho had won in total 53 caps, scoring 30 goals.