Magé, 1933 – Rio de Janeiro (Brasil), 1983

By Pablo Alabarces

Manuel Francisco dos Santos was born in Pau Grande, a rural district of Magé. As a child, he earned the nickname Garrincha (a small brown bird with a black-striped back, also called cambaxirra), by which he became world-famous. He was born with crooked legs — the left one bent outward and the right one bent inward, almost parallel — and one leg was six centimeters longer than the other. However, those legs helped him become the king of dribbling and the best right winger in football history.

Garrincha started playing at the age of fourteen in Pau Grande until he was sold to Botafogo at the age of twenty for five hundred cruzeiros (equivalent to 27 dollars or, at the time, the price of a bicycle). He spent most of his professional career at this club, marked by titles such as the 1957 Rio de Janeiro State Championship and the consecutive championships of 1961-1962. He scored 243 goals in 612 matches between 1953 and 1965. If he didn’t win more titles, it was due to the undeniable dominance of Pelé’s Santos team during the same period. From Botafogo, he moved to the Brazilian national team, with which he won two World Cup titles: Sweden 1958 and Chile 1962 (in which year he was elected the best player in the world). Of the sixty matches he played with the national team, he won 52, drew seven, and lost only one, against Hungary. He played in the 1966 World Cup in England, experiencing an absolute failure. After that, he played for several teams, such as Corinthians and Flamengo, until his final retirement in 1973. He then sank into alcoholism, which caused his death on January 20, 1983, at the age of fifty, from pulmonary edema. His wake was held at the Maracanã Stadium and witnessed by thousands of fans, who called him “the joy of the people.”