Brazilian World Cup legend Jairzinho takes a shot: Michael Donald’s best photograph
Brazilian World Cup legend Jairzinho takes a shot: Michael Donald’s best photograph. ‘Nowadays Jairzinho works with kids in the favelas of Rio where the unwritten rule is that you have to be out by 5pm.
‘Nowadays Jairzinho works with kids in the favelas of Rio where the unwritten rule is that you have to be out by 5pm. I asked for 10 more minutes and when I turned round, a guy had pulled a gun on my crew’ I’m not a mad football fan.
What I most love about the game is its universal appeal – it’s all about a ball crossing a line, and a goal is a goal whether it involves two jerseys in a park or the one that determines the outcome of a World Cup. But when I realised in 2007 that only 58 people had ever scored a goal in a World Cup final and that only 34 of these men were still alive, I thought it would be a great idea to photograph them.
It quickly became apparent that book sales alone would never finance the project – there were only two English players, the rest were in Europe or South America. But a successful pitch to a film producer won me the opportunity to travel to 13 countries with a documentary crew.