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Malicia is the Brazilian term that defines Japanese football thanks to a World Cup legend

Daizen Maeda celebrates scoring in this World Cup (Alex Slitz/Getty Images)

By Jack LangJune 29, 2026 Updated 12:50 am EDT

You do not have to be fluent in Japanese to pick it out in interviews and in newspaper columns. It is not a native word; it is a transplant from the other side of the planet. It is, however, a fundamental concept in Japanese football, oddly scratchproof since it first took hold.

Malicia means ‘malice’ or ‘evil’ in Brazilian Portuguese. Applied to sport, a better translation would be ‘guile’. You can already see why the word might be prevalent in Brazilian football, synonymous with street smarts and quick wits.

Japan, though? Given the distance between the two countries, not to mention the vast cultural differences, its use may seem surprising. That, though, would be to fail to account for one factor. And one man.

The idea of malicia was introduced to Japan by Zico, the star of Brazil’s 1982 World Cup team and widely regarded as one of the greatest players in football history. He frequently cited it during his time as the manager of the Japanese national team, between 2002 and 2006. He wanted more of it: more grit, more cynicism, more killer instinct. He felt that the technical proficiency of his players was undercut by a sense of fair play that bordered on innocence.

“They don’t know how to deal with deception,” he said in a 2006 interview. “It comes from their education: when a player dives, they just stop.”

This can read a little like crude stereotyping. Zico, though, was no interloper: he was, by that point, 15 years into his relationship with the Japanese game. He already held something approaching deity status in the country. His diagnoses were taken on board, worked into the wider discourse. Malicia was only a small part of it, too; Zico’s influence on the Japanese game has been profound and durable.

It is no surprise that it has come up as Japan prepare for their World Cup last-32 tie against Brazil on Monday.

“Zico is an enormously important figure for Japanese football,” Japan coach Hajime Moriyasu said earlier this week. “He is a reference point for all of us.”

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Before the theory, there was praxis.

Zico first went to Japan in 1991. He had retired a year earlier and had been appointed as Brazil’s Minister for Sports by president Fernando Collor de Mello. An appearance in an exhibition match, however, sparked interest in Kashima, an industrial city just outside Toyko.

Zico playing in the Emperor’s Cup semi-final between Kashima Antlers and Shimizu S-Pulse in December 1993 (Etsuo Hara/Getty Images)

A local factory team, Sumitomo Metals, were registered for the inaugural season of the J.League, Japan’s first professional football competition. That was due to start in 1993; they wanted a big name to drum up interest in the area and, ideally, to act as a mentor.

Zico, 38, accepted the invitation. It felt like less like a career move and more like a calling. “I didn’t go there to win titles or personal accolades,” he said in an interview with the J.League website in 2019. “My playing career was over when I went there. My main objective was to help develop Japanese players.”

He was not impressed with the level of professionalism when he arrived. The players smoked before matches. The pitch was rough. Training only took place in the evening, after the factory had shut down for the day. Zico, who had grown accustomed to success during two trophy-laden spells at Flamengo in Brazil, knew improvements were needed if the club (later renamed Kashima Antlers) was to compete in the J.League.

“He arrived committed to building us into a championship team,” Mitsuru Suzuki, the former Kashima coach, said in 2022. “No matter what he was talking about, I made sure I took in everything he said.”

He set the tone on the pitch. Zico was top scorer for Sumitomo in their final campaign in the second division of the Japan Soccer League. On the opening weekend of the J.League, in May 1993, he led the rebranded Kashima to a 5-0 win against a Nagoya Grampus Eight team that included Gary Lineker. Zico’s brilliant hat-trick in that game made the front page of newspapers around Japan the following morning.

Zico celebrates scoring one of his four goals at the 1982 World Cup (Mark Leech/Offside via Getty Images)

Kashima finished second in that inaugural season. It was no small achievement for a side of relatively modest proportions. It kickstarted what would become one of the great Japanese football dynasties — a legacy that Zico himself helped to cement when he returned to Kashima as technical director between 1996 and 2002.

“When Zico came to the Antlers, he showed us what it meant to be a professional player,” former Kashima captain Mitsuo Ogasawara told Japanese magazine Football Critique in 2016. “He instilled all sorts of things in us: an obsession with winning, the need to give 100 per cent in training. He brought to this team the principles he’d always followed during his time in Brazil. Even now, when we talk about what we must do as individuals and as a team, his legacy is alive. His impact was immense.”

It also made him a cult figure. When he stopped playing, Kashima organised a 10-day ‘Zico Carnival’. There are two statues of him of him in the city — one at the football stadium, another in what locals now call ‘Zico Square’. There is an Antlers fan club called ‘Spirit of Zico’. His nickname in Japan is sakka no kamisama — The God of Football.

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