Personal information | |||
---|---|---|---|
Full name | Gérson de Oliveira Nunes | ||
Date of birth | 11 January 1941 | ||
Place of birth | Niterói, Brazil | ||
Height | 1.72 m (5 ft 7 1⁄2 in) | ||
Playing position | Midfielder | ||
Youth career | |||
1958 | Canto do Rio | ||
Senior career* | |||
Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
1959–1963 | Flamengo | 153 | (80) |
1963–1969 | Botafogo | 248 | (96) |
1969–1972 | São Paulo | 75 | (12) |
1972–1974 | Fluminense | 57 | (5) |
Total | 533 | (193) | |
National team | |||
1961–1972 | Brazil | 70 | (14) |
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
Gérson de Oliveira Nunes, generally known as Gérson Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈʒɛʁsõ], (born 11 January 1941 in Niterói), nickname Canhotinha de ouro (literally: Golden left foot) is a Brazilian former association footballer who played as a midfielder. He won numerous national trophies with the club sides of Flamengo, Botafogo, São Paulo and Fluminense. He is widely known as being "the brain" behind the Brazilian Football Team that won the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico.
Gérson was born and spent his childhood in the city of Niterói, just to the eastern side of Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of the former Rio de Janeiro State. In school he was nicknamed papagaio (parrot), a nickname he kept throughout his life and which many of his fellow footballers used when addressing him.
Both his father and uncle were professional footballers in Rio. His father was a close friend of the legendary Zizinho, widely held as the best Brazilian footballer before Pelé, a superstar with Flamengo and a forward in the 1950 national team, along with Vasco da Gama's Ademir Menezes and Flamengo's Jair da Rosa Pinto. So when Gérson announced he intended to become a footballer himself, he found little opposition at home.