Forty years since Garrincha’s last dribble

This Friday marks the 40th anniversary of Garrincha’s death, the tragic myth of Brazilian soccer. Considered the best dribbler in history, Mané Garrincha won two World Cups (1958 and 1962) with the ‘canarinha’, with whom he never lost playing alongside Pelé. This January 20, four decades ago, Brazil lost the angel with crooked feet, a victim of alcoholism. The footballer whose epitaph read: “Here rests in peace the man who was the joy of the people: Mané Garrincha”.

Manuel Francisco Dos Santos, whom his sister nicknamed Garrincha as a child (name of a bird that lives in Mato Grosso), died at dawn on Thursday, January 20, 1983 in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 49. According to the doctor who performed the autopsy, he had “pulmonary congestion, pancreatitis and pericarditis, all within the clinical picture of chronic alcoholism.”

Brazil mourned an idol that, although it was considered ‘the Joy of the People’, He died alone, almost forgotten, a victim of alcoholism, of all his excesses, of his own mistakes, of the treatment of some managers, of life. The last goodbye to Garrincha took place in Maracaná. In the streets, millions of Brazilian fans, broken with pain, wanted, broken with pain, to pay tribute to him.

The angel with crooked feet

Going back to his beginnings, it seemed very unlikely that Garrincha, who suffered from polio, could become a soccer star: his feet were turned 80º inwards, his right leg was 6 centimeters longer than his left, and his spine was twisted. From there came another of his nicknames: the angel with crooked feet. From the age of 10 he was addicted to tobacco. His alcohol problems ended his life. In fact, Garrincha himself uttered this phrase: “I don’t live life, life lives me.”

Despite so much against him, Garrincha became a soccer legend. A legend who, like so many, grew up in a poor neighborhood. In his case, in Pau Grande (Rio), and he dropped out of school early to start working as much as he could and later in a textile factory. But, at the same time, thanks to his crooked feet and the small balls he played with since childhood, Garrincha developed a dribble that was indecipherable for his rivals. A dribble that fascinated the world.

But tragedy haunted Garrincha very often. Thus, already being a player of Botafogo (the team of his life, in which he played between 1953 and 1965 and with which he won three Cariocas Championships), Joao de Carvalahaes, therapist for the Brazilian team, diagnosed, after doing a test, that Garrincha “is mentally weak and not fit to function in a collective game.” However, Nilton Santos and Didí, his teammates at BotafogoThey interceded for the winger with Vicente Feola, the Brazil coach who decided to include Garrincha in his list for the 1958 World Cup. Joao de Carvalahaes also advised against Pelé’s participation for psychological reasons!

The best three minutes in football history

The rest is already football history: Garrincha was one of the stars of that Brazilian team that won its first World Cup. He started it on the bench, but in the third game, against the USSR, Feola placed Pelé and Garrincha for the first time. In just three minutes, Garrincha outwitted two Soviet players and smashed the ball into the crossbar. Then Pelé was inches short of scoring. Until Vavá beat the legendary goalkeeper Lev Yashin. The journalist Gabriel Hanot assured: “The best three minutes in the history of football.”

Pelé and Garrincha no longer moved from the eleven of Brazil in that 1958 World Cup in Sweden, the first World Cup achieved by the five-time champion today (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002, she holds the record).

The best player of the World Cup in Chile 1962

But Garrincha’s World Cup was the one in 1962, in which Pelé was injured in the second game and the Botafogo winger assumed responsibility for leading Brazil to a two-time championship. And he was the best player of that 1962 World Cup and top scorer, with 4 goals, tied with his teammate Vavá and with Florian Albert (Hungary), Leonel Sánchez (Chile), Valentín Ivanov (Soviet Union) and Drazan Jerkovic (Yugoslavia).

Throughout their entire career, Pelé and Garrincha were always compared. “Pele was the man-goal; I was always the man who set up the plays. He is the king of football, I’m happy in the background, “said Garrincha. Meanwhile, Pelé, who died on December 29, said about Garrincha in 2018: “I never played with anyone or against anyone better than Garrincha. In the field we were partners. Off the pitch we were brothers.”

Together, with the Brazilian team, Pelé and Garrincha won the 1958 and 1962 World Cups. With the ‘canarinha’ they scored 55 goals between them, Pelé 44 and Garincha 11. ‘O Rei’ always said that, without Garrincha, he would not have been able to do it.

That’s how Garrincha played

His Botafogo teammates had to ask Garrincha in training to stop dribbling. He was the king of dribbling and with his football he spread joy to the stands. He overcame his physical problems based on an innate talent for this sport. Considered the best dribbler in the history of football, he stood out for his speed, his overflow and his extraordinary ease in getting away from rivals. In a span of land.

Garrincho was a magician as a player, but off the pitch He had a troubled life, with problems with alcohol and tobacco from an early age. He was married three times, had 14 well-known children (one of them after a relationship during the 1958 World Cup in Sweden) and one of his wives was the singer Elza Soares. In April 1969, Garrincha was driving drunk with Elza, one of his daughters and the singer’s mother. There was an accident and his mother-in-law died instantly. He was sentenced to two years in prison suspended.

Already after Chile 1962 Garrincha began to have leg problems, but the Botafogo leaders forced him not to stop and play undercover. One of his legs began to atrophy. The economic problems arrived. The downhill. bankruptcy The definitive withdrawal, in 1972. Oblivion

read also