Garrincha

• 1. Introduction

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  Garrincha was born with one leg six centimetres shorter than the other, with his left leg turning outwards and his right turning inwards. A doctor certified him as crippled in childhood. He grew up in Pau Grande, a district of Magé in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and for years showed no interest in a professional football career despite obvious gifts that scouts had already noticed. Yet on the 19th of July 1953, on his first-team debut for Botafogo, he scored a hat trick against Bonsucesso. Before the decade was out, he would inspire a brand-new chant in football stadiums - the bullfighting cry of olé - and become someone the British press described as Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, and a snake charmer all rolled into one.

  His full name was Manuel Francisco dos Santos, though his family called him Mané, short for Manuel. His sister Rosa gave him the other name. She noticed he was as small as a little bird and started calling him Garrincha, the north-eastern name for the wren. By the age of four, the name had stuck. Those two nicknames combined into Mané Garrincha, the name that fans across Brazil still use. He would carry it to two World Cup victories, and to the unique distinction of winning the Golden Ball, the Golden Boot, and the World Cup itself in the same tournament. What follows is the story of how he got there - and what the journey cost him.

• 2. The Boy from Pau Grande

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  Amaro, Garrincha's father, drank cachaça heavily, and the habit would follow his son through life. Beyond that inheritance, young Manuel had to live inside a body that should not, by any conventional medical judgment, have been capable of elite sport. His right leg curved inwards, his left curved outwards, and the difference in length was enough for a physician to put it in writing: crippled. None of it slowed him down on the streets of Pau Grande.

  His younger brother Jimmy dos Santos would eventually play 20 games for Série A side CR Vasco da Gama, in 1959. But Garrincha himself felt no urgency to pursue a career. Scouts knew about him and yet he was already married and a parent before he signed for Botafogo in 1953 - at which point the club's officials were simply relieved to learn he was old enough to be treated as a professional.

  The audition for that contract is one of the more remarkable stories from his early years. In his first training session with Botafogo, he dribbled the ball through the legs of Nílton Santos, a Brazilian international defender who already held 16 international caps. Santos, rather than taking offence, immediately told the club they had to sign the young man. A reserve appearance and then the hat-trick debut followed in swift succession, and Garrincha's path into professional football was set.

• 3. The Art of the Dribble

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  Writing for The Guardian in 2010, football writer Scott Murray put it plainly: Garrincha was the greatest dribbler ever. His teammate at Brazil, Djalma Santos, reached for a different comparison. He had a childish spirit, Santos said, and called Garrincha football's answer to Charlie Chaplin.

  What made the dribbling so hard to defend was partly anatomical. His unequal, curved legs gave him a low centre of gravity and an unpredictable gait. Opponents could not read which way he would go, because he was equally comfortable cutting inside on his left foot or going down the line on his right. He could turn at top speed and accelerate off at unusual angles. He also possessed a powerful shot with either foot, and was a specialist in set pieces, curving free kicks and corners with the outside of his foot.

  He scored directly from corners four times in his career. He is also credited with inspiring the bullfighting chant of olé at football grounds. During a 1958 club match for Botafogo, he took on River Plate defender Vairo repeatedly, teasing and feinting and going past him over and over. When he sprinted away and appeared to have "forgotten" the ball, with Vairo chasing behind him, the crowd's olés dissolved into laughter. The chant has been part of football grounds ever since.

• 4. Sweden 1958

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  Ten days before the 1958 World Cup finals, on the 29th of May, Garrincha scored a goal against Fiorentina in Italy that illustrated exactly who he was. He beat four defenders and the goalkeeper, reached the goal line, and instead of tapping the ball in, paused and dribbled past the returning goalkeeper Enzo Robotti to score. His coaches were furious at what they read as irresponsibility. That assessment likely cost him a place in Brazil's first two matches of the tournament.

  He started the third match against the Soviet Union, and it also happened to be the debut of a seventeen-year-old named Pelé. Both Garrincha and Pelé had October birthdays - Garrincha born in 1933, Pelé in 1940, exactly seven years apart. Against the Soviets, who were among the favourites for the tournament, Garrincha received the ball on the right wing inside the opening minute, beat three players, and hit the post. He then set up a chance for Pelé, who struck the crossbar. The opening minutes of that match are often described as the best three minutes of football ever played. Brazil won 2-0.

  In the quarter-final, a 1-0 win against Wales, the opposing fullback Mel Hopkins described Garrincha as a phenomenon capable of sheer magic, noting that his unusual legs made him impossible to read. In the final against Sweden, Garrincha set up Vavá twice in the first half as Brazil came from behind to win the trophy. As his teammates celebrated, Garrincha was briefly confused. He had been under the impression the competition was more league-like, and that Brazil would play all the other teams twice.

• 5. Chile 1962

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  Pelé suffered an injury after the second match of the 1962 World Cup and did not play again in the tournament. What followed was Garrincha's finest hour in international football. Against Spain, with Brazil losing in the second half, it was Garrincha who drove to the right flank, dribbled past a defender, paused, dribbled past the same man again along with another, and crossed for Amarildo to score the winning goal.

  Against England in the quarter-final, Garrincha opened the scoring with a header from a corner kick. After England equalized, Vavá scored off a rebound from a Garrincha shot; then Garrincha, receiving the ball outside the area, bent a curved shot - the banana shot - into the bottom of the net for 3-1. The British press produced the line about Matthews, Finney, and a snake charmer. A stray dog ran onto the pitch during that match. England striker Jimmy Greaves got down on all fours to catch it, succeeded, and the dog urinated on his shirt. Garrincha, according to Greaves, found this so funny that he took the dog home. The Brazilian squad officially raffled the animal off, and Garrincha won. The dog was named Bi, from bi-campeões, meaning two-times champions.

  In the semi-final against hosts Chile, Garrincha scored twice in a 4-2 win. His first was a 20-yard left-foot shot; his second, a header. The Chilean newspaper El Mercurio ran the headline: "What planet is Garrincha from?" He was sent off after 83 minutes for retaliating against persistent fouling, but was not suspended for the final. Brazil faced Czechoslovakia with Garrincha suffering from a severe fever. Brazil won 3-1, and he was voted player of the tournament. He became the first player in history to win the Golden Ball, the Golden Boot, and the World Cup in the same tournament.

• 6. The Personal Cost

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  In August 1959, his wife Nair gave birth to their fifth child. The same month, his mistress Iraci announced her own first pregnancy. The month before, he had returned from a tour of Sweden with Botafogo, having fathered a child with a local girl. On the drive home to Pau Grande after that trip, he ran over his father Amaro. He drove away without stopping, with an angry mob in pursuit. When they caught him, he was drunk, almost catatonic, and with no grasp of what he had done. His father died on the 10th of October that year of liver cancer, having been alcohol-dependent for years.

  Garrincha was married twice. His first marriage to Nair Marques in 1952 - a factory worker from Pau Grande - produced eight daughters before the couple separated in 1965. He then married Elza Soares, a samba singer, in an unofficial ceremony in March 1966. They separated in 1977, when Soares left after he struck her during an argument. He also had a significant affair with showgirl Angelita Martinez. He is known to have fathered at least 14 children.

  He was involved in several serious road accidents throughout his life, including a crash into a lorry in April 1969 that killed his mother-in-law. In 1966, with his career declining, he was sold to Corinthians. His professional career ended in 1972 at Olaria, though he played occasional exhibition matches until 1982. When he retired in 1973 he was 40 years old and had recently become a grandfather - his daughter Edenir had just had a daughter named Alexandra. He later said that being a professional footballer and a grandfather at the same time felt strange.

• 7. The Farewell and Legacy

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  On the 19th of December 1973, a farewell match was held for Garrincha at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. The crowd numbered 131,000. A FIFA World team composed mainly of Argentine and Uruguayan players faced a Brazil side that included Pelé and Carlos Alberto, several of them veterans of the 1970 World Cup-winning squad. Garrincha started the match. At a moment when Brazil had the ball in attack during the first half, the referee stopped play so Garrincha could leave the pitch and acknowledge the crowd. He did a lap of the pitch and then disappeared through the stadium tunnel.

  Garrincha died of cirrhosis of the liver on the 20th of January 1983, in an alcoholic coma in Rio de Janeiro. He had been hospitalised eight times in the preceding year. Despite a difficult final decade and poor press during his second marriage, his funeral procession - from the Maracanã to Pau Grande - drew millions of fans, former players, and friends. His epitaph reads: "Here rests in peace the one who was the Joy of the People - Mané Garrincha." Someone painted on a nearby wall: Obrigado, Garrincha, por você ter vivido. Thank you, Garrincha, for having lived.

  The Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha in Brasília, originally inaugurated in 1974 under a different name, was renamed in his honour shortly after his death. Brazil never lost a single match when both Garrincha and Pelé were in the same lineup - a record that held across every one of the 50 international appearances he made between 1955 and 1966, and one that no other pairing in Brazilian football history has matched.