FOOTBALL LEGENDS

Manuel dos Santos GARRINCHA
Position: right wing
HONOURS
FIFA World Cup (1958, 1962)
FIFA World Cup MVP (1962)
FIFA World Cup Top Scorer (1962)
Torneo Carioca (1957, 1961, 1962)
Torneo Rio-São Paulo (1962, 1964)
National team: 50 caps and 13 goals (one defeat only!)
CLUBS
European Champions Cup (1971, 1972, 1973)
European Super Cup (1972)
Intercontinental Cup (1972)
Dutch League (1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1982, 1983, 1984)
Dutch Cup (1967, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1983, 1984)
Spanish League (1974)
Spanish Cup (1978)
European Footballer Of The Year (1971, 1973, 1974)
National team: 33 Goals in 48 Matches

Garrincha was born in Pau Grande (Rio de Janeiro), where people still venerate his name, on October 28th 1933. He was the seventh child of a night watchman, and was born with his left leg bent inwards and his right leg six centimetres shorter and curved outwards. The doctors that examined him told his parents that he would have never been able to walk properly.
Mané, however, made his doctors change their mind, as he became the best right wing in the history of football. After trying in vain to pass the selections at CR Vasco da Gama, América FC and San Cristoval, he got to Botafogo FR, where he took .a test and was passed by his own marker, the great Nilton Santos. Later he shared with him the great successes got with Botafogo FR and the Seleção...
He got his international consecration with his appearances at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden and in Chile in 1962. His feints made the defenders of the opposing team go crazy, and were one of the main offensive means of the Brazilian selection which won the World Cup in 1958 and in 1962. In 1958 Garrincha started from the bench but then he had the chance to play thanks to the intervention of Nilton Santos and of the main Brazilian players, who convinced Mister Feola to line him up with the seventeen-year-old Pelé. What happened was that Brazil won hands down all the matches, and got the Cup for the first time in their history. In the 1962 World championship in Chile he was the brightest star. Pelé got injured in the second match of the preliminaries and Garrincha took his team-mates by the hand, and with his extraordinary pieces of play the Seleção repeated the victory got 4 years before in Sweden. Mané risked to skip the final for a sending-off got in the semi-final against Chile, but FIFA pardoned him and allowed him to play the final against Czechoslovakia, which Brazil won by 3 to 1. Garrincha was the topscorer (with 4 goals) and best player of the tournament.
In 1963, however, the way down of his career started: in fact, he underwent a knee operation because of a car accident, but after it his performance was limited. He played the world championship in England in 1966, the Seleção was eliminated from the World Cup in the preliminaries, and Garrincha suffered the first and only defeat in his career with the shirt of the selection, against Hungary. That was the match that made him say goodbye to the Seleção, with them he had played 50 official matches and scored 13 goals between 1955 and 1966. After that World Cup he played with a few clubs and spent also short spells with French and Italian teams until his farewell to football in 1973.
Garrincha represented a real legend, the press of the time described him as a fantastic and incomparable player because of his great speed, impossible goals, perfect assists and crosses, sensational feints in spite of his twisted leg. Shattered by alcohol, forgotten and completely broken, he died in Rio de Janeiro on January 20th, 1983 when he was not 50 yet.