Rio de Janeiro: Pele says Brazil can win the World Cup without Neymar. He has cited the example of how Brazil went on to nail the trophy in 1962 after losing him to an injury in the second match.
What Pele conveniently forgot to mention was that the Brazilian team of 1962 had a player called Garrincha. Pele’s absence wasn’t felt at all in Chile as Garrincha inspired Brazil to their second title in succession with his scintillating performance on the right wing.
Even Pele could never do in a World Cup what Garrincha did in 1962: win the title single-handedly. Brazil’s class of 2014 doesn’t have a player who can hold a candle to the effervescent talent of Garrincha. Pele has merely expressed his hope than expectation. Only Diego Maradona could emulate Garrincha 24 years later.
Football would never see someone like Garrincha again. The man-child played the game at the highest level as if it were a kick-about on a street. No stage, however big it was, frightened him.
Football was all about happiness and spontaneity for Garrincha. He enchanted fans with his impetuosity on the field. The winger took his indulgence to the extreme as he did things no mature adult would contemplate doing during matches.
When a coach at his club, Botofogo, tried to teach him to curb his excessive dribbling by putting a chair on the wing and asked him to cross the ball from that point, Garrincha dribbled the chair by sliding the ball through the legs of the poor wooden thing. The art of stopping the ball dead after dribbling at pace came naturally to him.
Garrincha was known to dribble the ball backwards all of a sudden, outside the sidelines and past the goal line — all during a match. He would also leave the ball behind after dribbling and run forward to fool his marker.
Born with his left leg curved outside and right leg bent inwards in Pau Grande outside Rio de Janeiro, Garrincha wasn’t destined to be an athlete. But he did go on to play football like no one had played the game before and after him. The man of Indian and black extraction never took football seriously. For him, it was first and foremost fun. It was like a toy in the hands of a wide-eyed child.
He wasn’t interested to play football professionally. When he finally became one after much persuasion, he was the game’s most amateur professional. Amateur is used in the sense that he played football for the pure joy of playing it. Results were incidental to his game. His attitude was at least 50 years behind his contemporaries while his talent was 25 years ahead of them.
Even after 31 years of his death as a broken man, no football player is loved more here. Pele is respected for his achievements but he doesn’t reside in the hearts of Brazilians like Garrincha.
