Eusébio

• 1. Introduction

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  Eusébio da Silva Ferreira grew up barefoot in the Mafalala neighbourhood of Lourenço Marques, kicking balls made of socks stuffed with newspapers rolled into spheres. By the time he walked off a Wembley pitch in 1966, tears streaming down his face after a semifinal loss to England, he had already become the most feared striker in Europe. How does a child from a Mozambican shantytown become the man Alfredo Di Stéfano called "the best player of all time"? That is the question this documentary will answer. It starts with a father who died of tetanus when his son was eight years old, moves through one of the most bizarre transfer sagas in football history, and arrives at a tournament in England where a single quarter-final afternoon against North Korea rewrote what one player could accomplish in ninety minutes.

• 2. Mafalala's Child

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  Laurindo António da Silva Ferreira, a white railroad worker from Malanje in Portuguese Angola, died of tetanus in 1950, leaving his widow Elisa Anissabeni to raise the family largely on her own in the Mafalala neighbourhood of Lourenço Marques. Eusébio was eight years old at the time, the fourth of five children. His mother would later have three more children from a second marriage. The household sat in an extremely poor part of the city, and the young Eusébio skipped school classes regularly to play football on improvised pitches.

  His father had loved the game too, supporting Lisbon's Benfica and its local affiliate, the Grupo Desportivo de Lourenço Marques. That loyalty lived on in the neighbourhood where Eusébio grew up. Eusébio formed a team with friends called Os Brasileiros, the Brazilians, named in honour of the great Brazilian national team of the 1950s. Each player took the name of one of those superstars and they played with whatever they could find.

  At twelve, Eusébio tried to join Desportivo de Lourenço Marques, the Benfica feeder club, but was turned away without a trial. Ferroviário de Lourenço Marques also rejected him. He then approached Sporting Clube de Lourenço Marques, the sixth branch of Sporting Lisbon, which accepted him along with a group of friends from his neighbourhood. There he received his first formal coaching, his first football kit, and his first organised competitive fixtures. Three of his siblings eventually became engineers. Eusébio, who studied only to the 4th grade, chose a different path, one that would see him score 77 goals in 42 appearances for Sporting Lourenço Marques between 1957 and 1960.

• 3. The Transfer War

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  In June 1960, a Brazilian former player named José Carlos Bauer spotted Eusébio at Lourenço Marques while on a ten-week tour to Africa. Bauer had been asked to look for talent by his old coach at São Paulo, Béla Guttmann, who was by then managing Benfica. Bauer first offered Eusébio to São Paulo, but the Brazilian club could not afford the asking price. Guttmann, when he heard the report, moved quickly.

  The agreement to bring Eusébio to Benfica was negotiated in Mozambique by one of his brothers, acting as an informal agent. Benfica's local representative, a major named Rodrigues de Carvalho, struck a deal that included a payment to Elisa Anissabene that rose from an initial offer of 110,000 Portuguese escudos to a final figure of 250,000 escudos in November 1960, as interest from other clubs grew. Eusébio arrived in Lisbon on the 15th of December 1960, aged eighteen, but did not formally sign until May 1961 because Sporting CP disputed the transfer. Sporting's argument rested on the fact that Sporting Lourenço Marques was its own affiliate, not Benfica's.

  The Portuguese Directorate-General for Sports initially ruled in Sporting CP's favour, before the Portuguese Football Federation reversed that decision in Benfica's favour. Meanwhile, Eusébio's childhood friend Hilário, by then at Sporting CP, visited him at Benfica's dormitories and offered a professional contract worth double Benfica's terms, along with funds to reimburse Benfica for its costs. Eusébio left the building with Hilário that evening. Benfica became alarmed and, fearing what they called a kidnapping attempt, gave Eusébio the codename Ruth Malosso. On the 8th of April 1961, Benfica moved him to a holiday home belonging to former club president Domingos Claudino, then to a hotel near Meia Praia beach in Lagos, Algarve, where he remained for twelve days. It was there, while in hiding, that Eusébio sat his 4th grade diploma by final examination.

  Benfica's representatives reportedly warned Eusébio of the danger of being run over in the street. He told his mother: "Mum, I'm going back because there are men here who want to hurt me." The transfer was eventually unlocked after Jaime Catarino Duarte, son of the club president, provided the outstanding 400,000 escudos in the early hours of the 13th of May 1961. The total fee paid to Sporting Lourenço Marques was 400,000 Portuguese escudos, equivalent to roughly 193,000 euros in 2023 terms.

• 4. Benfica's Golden Era

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  Eusébio made his first appearance for Benfica against Atlético Clube de Portugal in a friendly on the 23rd of May 1961, scoring a hat-trick in a 4-2 win. His first official match came just over a week later, on the 1st of June, in the Taça de Portugal, where he scored a goal but also missed a penalty, only the first of five penalties he would miss in his entire Benfica career. On the 15th of June, in the final of the invitational Tournoi de Paris against Pelé's Santos, Guttmann brought Eusébio on from the bench with Benfica trailing 0-4. Eusébio scored three goals between the 63rd and the 80th minute. The match, a 6-3 defeat, still earned Eusébio a place on the cover of L'Équipe.

  The following season turned Eusébio into a name known across Europe. He scored two goals in Benfica's European Cup final victory against Real Madrid, a 5-3 result, and finished second in the 1962 Ballon d'Or in his first complete season as a professional. In October 1963, FIFA selected him to represent a world eleven at the Golden Anniversary of the Football Association at Wembley Stadium.

  His record at Benfica over the course of his career was staggering in its consistency. He was the Portuguese First Division's top scorer in 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, and 1973, a record seven times. He won eleven Primeira Liga titles, five Portuguese Cups, and one European Cup, while also reaching three additional European Cup finals in 1963, 1965, and 1968. In the dying seconds of the 1968 final against Manchester United at Wembley, with the score level at 1-1, he came close to winning the trophy, only for goalkeeper Alex Stepney to save his shot. Manchester United won 4-1 in extra time. Eusébio paused to applaud Stepney as the English club prepared to restart. When he left Benfica, he had scored 473 goals in 440 competitive matches.

• 5. Nine Goals in England

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  Portugal's 1966 World Cup campaign was built around Eusébio in a way few tournaments have been built around a single player. The squad had been placed in Group 3 alongside Bulgaria, Hungary, and the reigning champions Brazil. After a modest opening against Hungary, Eusébio scored against Bulgaria. The decisive group match came against an injured-Pelé Brazilian side, and Eusébio scored twice, including a celebrated volley from a tight angle after a corner kick. Brazil were eliminated.

  The quarter-final against North Korea remains one of the most dramatic reversals in World Cup history. Portugal trailed 0-3 after twenty-five minutes. Eusébio then scored four consecutive goals, two before half time and two in the opening fifteen minutes of the second half. His fourth came from the penalty spot after two North Korean players tackled him following a run from deep inside his own half. Portugal won 5-3, equalling the record for the largest deficit overcome in a win at the tournament, matching Austria's achievement from 1954. Eusébio also joined a select group of players who had scored four or more goals in a single World Cup match, a record that stood until Oleg Salenko scored five in 1994.

  The semifinal against England, moved from Goodison Park in Liverpool to Wembley after what were described as interventions by English officials, produced the image most closely associated with Eusébio in 1966. He was closely tracked throughout the match by defensive midfielder Nobby Stiles, yet still scored Portugal's only goal from the penalty spot in the 82nd minute, ending England's run of seven consecutive clean sheets and 708 minutes without conceding. After the goal, he retrieved the ball and went to salute goalkeeper Gordon Banks. Portugal lost 1-2. Eusébio left the pitch in tears, comforted by teammates and opponents alike. In Portugal, the match is still called the Jogo das Lágrimas, the Game of Tears.

  In the third-place match against the Soviet Union, he scored the opening goal from the penalty spot in the 12th minute, his ninth and final World Cup goal. Lev Yashin guessed correctly but could not keep the ball out. As he had done with Banks, Eusébio went to acknowledge Yashin after the goal. Portugal won 2-1. Eusébio took the Golden Boot with nine goals in six appearances, a record for Portugal at the World Cup that still stands. The English public's admiration was so immediate that his wax figure was added to Madame Tussauds in London, and he received the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year for 1966.

• 6. Power, Politics, and Legacy

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  Eusébio said he visited the Portuguese Parliament eight times to speak with António de Oliveira Salazar, who governed Portugal as the Estado Novo regime's virtual dictator from 1932 to 1968. European clubs were interested in signing Eusébio, and he was willing to go, but Salazar, whom Eusébio referred to as "the godfather", blocked every departure. He played his entire peak career in Lisbon because a dictator preferred to keep his most famous citizen at home.

  After the Carnation Revolution of 1974 and the subsequent independence of Mozambique as the People's Republic of Mozambique in 1975, Eusébio lost all of his property and investments in the country where he was born. He married Flora Claudina Bruheim on the 8th of October 1965 and they had two daughters: Carla Elisa, born in 1968, and Sandra Judite, born in 1969. He was a devout Roman Catholic throughout his life.

  In a 2011 interview, Eusébio described Sporting Lourenço Marques as racist, saying it was seen in his neighbourhood as a club of the elites and the police, which did not like people of colour. He had no affection for Sporting CP either, citing the transfer saga as evidence. "What I do not like is Sporting CP," he said, and added that even the Mozambican branch was unwelcome in his mind. After his death on the 5th of January 2014, of heart failure at home at age seventy-one, the Portuguese government declared three days of national mourning. Hundreds of thousands paid tribute. On the 9th of January, his coffin was carried around the field of the Estádio da Luz in fulfilment of a personal wish. Parliament voted unanimously for him to be interred at the National Pantheon, where notable Portuguese personalities are buried. He was the first footballer to be placed there. One year after his death, the avenue in front of the Estádio da Luz was renamed Avenida Eusébio da Silva Ferreira. In September 2019, Pope Francis cited him, alongside Maria Mutola, as an example of perseverance during a visit to Mozambique.