Some finals are remembered for the trophy. This one is remembered for the football. On 21 June 1970, in the thin air of the Estadio Azteca, Brazil beat Italy 4-1 and produced what many still call the most complete attacking performance the World Cup has seen.
The match
It did not start like a procession. Pelé headed Brazil in front after 18 minutes, rising at the back post to a Rivelino cross. Italy levelled before half-time when Clodoaldo dawdled in his own half, Roberto Boninsegna pounced, and the sides went in at 1-1.
The second half belonged entirely to Brazil. Gérson drove a low shot into the corner on 66 minutes. Five minutes later Jairzinho turned in a third, becoming the only player to score in every round of a World Cup. Then came the fourth, the one people actually mean when they talk about this game.
The goal that defined it
Brazil's fourth is studied like a piece of music. It ran through most of the team, nine men touching the ball, Clodoaldo beating four Italians in his own half before the move rolled left to Rivelino, then to Jairzinho, then to Pelé on the edge of the box. Pelé did not shoot. He laid the ball, almost lazily, into the path of his onrushing captain, Carlos Alberto, who arrived at full speed from right-back and hammered it past Enrico Albertosi.
It was the last goal of the tournament, and it has never really been beaten as a statement of intent: a defender finishing a move that the whole side built.
Why it mattered
This was Brazil's third world title, and under the rules of the time it meant they kept the Jules Rimet trophy permanently. It also closed the book on Pelé's World Cup career at its peak rather than its decline, which is rarer than it sounds.
There is a tactical footnote that gets lost in the highlight reels. Italy had reached the final on the back of a famously mean defence and the catenaccio system built to smother teams exactly like this one. Brazil did not out-defend them. They overwhelmed the safety-first orthodoxy of the era with movement, and for a generation of coaches that result became the argument for attacking the game rather than strangling it.
The Azteca would host another final sixteen years later, and another moment that split opinion forever. But 1970 is the one drawn in full colour, the tournament that brought the World Cup to television in colour for the first time, and the side that made the medium worth watching.