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. 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. Over the course of four years, we interviewed every member of the exclusive World Cup club, and I made portraits of them all.

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