São Paulo wanted Luxemburgo before Telê, he chose Bragantino | OneFootball

It was on October 12, 1990, exactly 35 years ago, that Telê Santana signed a contract and had his return to São Paulo confirmed, beginning what would become the most victorious era in the club’s history.

It’s well known that the ‘Telê Era’ is a fundamental milestone for the Tricolor and is therefore more than well documented in books, documentaries, podcasts, and the like. In other words, a story that, if any São Paulo fan still doesn’t know it, there’s no shortage of material for them to learn even the details of how the mythic coach arrived to forever change his and the club’s destiny.

That’s why we prefer to revisit another story to mark the date—one far less widespread and known, and which deserves at least a curious look: how Vanderlei Luxemburgo was the dream choice to take over the Tricolor. And only after he turned it down (twice!) did the directors at Morumbi decide to go after Telê. Frustrating for the first time those who dream or dreamed of seeing the ‘Professor’ lead the São Paulo side, something that remains unprecedented to this day.

Well then, let’s, as always, start at the beginning…

The as controversial as it was unforgettable (not for legal reasons) year of 1990 was, without a shadow of a doubt, rock bottom for the Tricolor. Never, before or after, did the club go through such a difficult period, piling up debts, internal crisis and, of course, embarrassments. Yes, it’s the season of the so-called ‘relegation’ that idiots insist on trumpeting…

The fact is that in this cauldron of disaster, it was clear that no coach would keep his job. And that’s what happened. Carlos Alberto Silva started the year in charge, backed by the state title from the previous year, but fell after a scoreless draw with Corinthians on April 8.

That’s when the dream of landing Luxemburgo began to hover over the Tricolor. While in-house assistant Pupo Gimenez took over on an interim basis, already under pressure with a qualification to the semifinals that wouldn’t come, the mission to hire the ‘Professor’ was put into action by president José Eduardo Mesquita Pimenta and football director Fernando Casal de Rey.

Throughout that late April and May, the press feasted on São Paulo’s soap opera to try to hire Luxa. According to Folha de S. Paulo, for example, he drew attention for the strong campaigns at Bragantino, where he worked.

“Eliminated by São Paulo itself in last year’s semifinals, Luxemburgo is in third place in Group I this season and is seen as dedicated and hardworking,” said the paper.

O Estado de S. Paulo went further and described the qualities seen by São Paulo’s then board to put their trust in Luxemburgo’s name.

“The profile outlined by the directors for the future coach is someone young, a winner, and who knows how to work with young players. For them, working at Morumbi would be the missing chance for Vanderlei Luxemburgo to become a winning coach,” it said.

On May 12, the worst happened. São Paulo lost 1–0 to Guarani in Campinas (SP) and was knocked out of the state championship. Worse yet, they would have to play the depressing play-in, a last-ditch chance to qualify and, more than that, avoid playing the 1991 edition among the smaller teams.

And that’s when it was time to speed up the search for a coach. The assessment was that the delay in defining a replacement for Silva had cost them a direct spot in the semifinals.

The problem for the Tricolor was that Luxemburgo didn’t seem very excited about working at Morumbi. Folha, for example, reported that the board simply couldn’t find him to discuss the job. Since the championship had paused for those directly qualified to the semifinals due to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, the ‘Professor’ traveled to Rio de Janeiro (RJ).

Estadão dug deeper into the story. It reported that the Morumbi club approached doctor Marco Aurélio Cunha (yes, him), then a Bragantino employee, for Luxemburgo’s contacts. Cleverly, their president, Nabi Abi Chedid, said he didn’t have his coach’s contact in his hometown, leaving the Tricolor stuck.

Time went by and, on May 16, desperation had grown to the point that Pimenta gathered a group of allied council members to ask about other names. Besides Luxemburgo, names like Falcão (before he took over the Brazilian National Team), Candinho, and Jair Pereira were mentioned, and the board began to abandon the Luxemburgo dream.

Gimenez had already led the club in the play-in opener, a 2–1 win over Ponte Preta at Morumbi on May 20, when the board finally managed to speak with Luxemburgo. And they heard what they didn’t want: he refused to leave Bragança Paulista (SP). Suspicions at the time were far from loyalty to the club with which he would win the state title that year and leaned more toward an approach from Rio football. His Flamengo, the team he openly supported, had also made contact to hire him.

Resigned, São Paulo had to settle for other options. They ended up choosing the Uruguayan Pablo Forlan, a former player of theirs from the 1970s.

Nothing worked: the club was knocked out of the play-in, crashed out of the state championship in pathetic fashion with the worst campaign in its history in the competition, and was branded as having been relegated by rivals. But at least they began to set things straight. Telê would arrive after being dismissed by Palmeiras. And the rest is history…

As for Luxa and the Tricolor, well, the marriage that never happened already had two other serious courtships. In the first, in 2001, he was considered to replace Osvaldo Alvarez, Vadão, in the second semester. But he ended up asking for too much, and Nelsinho Baptista was chosen.

In the other instance he was considered, in 2010, for Ricardo Gomes’s spot, the coach accuses Rogério Ceni of having campaigned against his name. But the truth is that accusations of a card-game addiction and a close relationship with agents scared Juvenal Juvêncio, who chose to give a chance to Sergio Baresi, from the academy. A story that, who knows, we might bring here someday…

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.