Altair Gomes de Figueiredo, usually referred to as Altair (January 22, 1938 – August 9, 2019), was a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

defender and a World Champion for

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

in the 1962 World Cup. He spent his entire career at

Fluminense Fluminense Football Club (), known as Fluminense, is a Brazilian sports club best known for its professional football team that competes in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, the first tier of Brazilian football and the Campeonato Carioca, th ...

, for which he played 551 games, scoring twice. He was called “''magro''” (slim) because he was skinny and despite his modest physical appearance, was a tough tackler and tremendous marker. His duels with

Garrincha Manuel Francisco dos Santos (28 October 1933 – 20 January 1983), nicknamed Mané Garrincha, best known as simply Garrincha (, "little bird"), was a Brazilian professional footballer who played as a right winger. He is widely regarded as one of ...

were legendary. He retired from playing in 1971 aged 33.

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* 1938 births 2019 deaths Brazilian footballers Association football defenders Fluminense FC players Sport Club do Recife players Fluminense FC managers 1962 FIFA World Cup players 1966 FIFA World Cup players FIFA World Cup-winning players Brazil international footballers Afro-Brazilian sportspeople Brazilian football managers Sportspeople from Niterói {{Brazil-footy-defender-1930s-stub