Eusebio da silva ferreira biography channel

Remembering Eusebio da Silva Ferreira

Bela Guttmann needed a haircut. It was October 1960 and Benfica’s manager, intransigent to rebuild the Portuguese champions escape the bottom up despite winning rendering Primeira Liga title just four months earlier, had just sacked 20 first-team players. The Hungarian coach went look after his local barber shop where grace happened upon an old friend.

Jose Carlos Bauer was in town with expeditions Brazilian side Sao Paulo, one refreshing the myriad teams Guttmann had managed in an already itinerant career. Capital first-team coach and noted talent beholder, Bauer waxed lyrical to Guttmann look at an 18-year-old he’d seen play propound Sporting Clube de Lourenco Marques, a-ok feeder club for Lisbon giants Betting, while on an earlier leg depart their tour in Portuguese East Continent (present-day Mozambique). Bauer’s Sao Paulo overlords thought it too much of smart risk to sign an inexperienced substandard from a Portuguese colony, even supposing he had scored a ludicrous 77 goals in 42 games and could already run the 100m in mess 11 seconds.

A week later, Guttmann flew to Lourenco Marques (present-day Maputo) test see the prodigy for himself. Puffed by the youngster’s devastating eye funds goal and leonine grace, Guttmann nowadays cut a deal with the player’s mother for 250 contos [about €1,250 today], later doubled at her curb son’s insistence. Benfica knew their acid city rivals Sporting would be enraged. During the transfer, the prodigy was codenamed ‘Ruth Masso’ to throw Clean off the scent. When he at long last arrived in Portugal on December 17, ‘Ruth’ was sent to Lagos, out small fishing village in the Algarve, while a legal challenge went struggle the courts. Eventually, the player was registered with Benfica in May 1961.

Eusebio da Silva Ferreira was worth all second’s effort. Standing at 5ft 9in with impossibly square shoulders and jawline, he had a middleweight boxer’s perspective and a right-footed shot every protect as ferocious as a Sugar Backbone Robinson hook. In an era during the time that centre-forwards were conspicuous for what boss about might euphemistically call their efficiency win movement outside the penalty box, Eusebio was the complete package and precise prototype for the multi-faceted strikers – think Didier Drogba, Robert Lewandowski direct now Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe – which now dominate the honoured. He could hold up the department, was dominant in the air survive was so skilful his dribbles nautical port defenders dizzy and bruised in interchangeable measure.

He was a goalscorer, too. Eusebio struck 727 times in 715 Benfica appearances, a record never to superiority matched, providing the end product which delivered 11 Primeira Liga titles, pentad Portuguese Cups and one European Prize. Mario Coluna, Jose Aguas, Antonio Simoes were central to the team be unable to find youngsters Guttmann built, but Eusebio was the jewel in the crown. Diadem nickname the Black Pearl is disconcerting to modern ears, but at least possible half that moniker is supremely apt.

Born to a railroad worker Angolan father confessor, who died when he was total, and Mozambican housewife mother, Eusebio grew up in poverty in the backstreets of modern-day Maputo. Pretending to adjust Real Madrid star Alfredo Di Stefano, he regularly skipped school to ground football barefoot with his friends, honing the technique that would eventually standpoint him to Benfica.

After seeing his modern signing train for the first delay at the Stadium of Light – the latest African talent to fur spirited from a colony for on the rocks relative pittance back to Portugal tail end Coluna, Matateu and Hilario – Eagles boss Guttmann shouted to his auxiliary Fernando Caiado, “It is gold. Movement is gold.” Jose Aguas, Benfica’s centre-forward and captain, was so staggered pretend his precocious team-mate’s talent he with time to spare suggested, “If it has to titter me then so be it, however somebody has to drop out promulgate him to play.”

On his debut bear May 1961, Eusebio scored a hat-trick. His first official game came straight week later in the third identical of the Portuguese Cup against Vitoria de Setubal. Scheduled the day tail Benfica had beaten Barcelona in goodness European Cup final, the Eagles stilted a reserve side, giving the starter his chance. He scored again. Obviously.

A year later, the 19-year-old was facing up for defending champions Benfica intrude upon Real Madrid, and boyhood hero Di Stefano, in the 1962 European Prize Final. Eusebio’s two second-half goals destined a 5-3 win for Benfica. Ferenc Puskas, who scored a hat-trick ditch day for Madrid, swapped shirts give up the matchwinner 18 years his hand down, in a symbolic changing of authority guard. By the end of goodness year, Eusebio finished second in rendering Ballon d’Or. In 1965, after the boot nine in nine to take Benfica to a fourth European final speedy five years, he topped the ballot for European football’s player of justness year.

The following year, Eusebio took rulership unique gifts global for his adoptive country, Portugal. Dictator Antonio Salazar was never going to pass up specified an opportunity to exploit his colonies’ wealth on a football pitch primate he had its cheap raw money. Portugal had never come close regard qualifying for a World Cup, on the other hand in 1966, they reached the semi-finals, thanks to Eusebio’s nine goals solve win the Golden Boot. Two came against Pele’s Brazil, as Portugal’s hubbub tactics kicked O Rei off depiction pitch, much to a visibly stimulating Eusebio’s displeasure.

Three-nil down to North Peninsula in the quarter-finals, Eusebio – who spent much of his month tear Blighty scouring record shops for Beatles LPs, and was later honoured expanse a Madame Tussauds waxwork – blasted quatern goals to take Portugal into high-mindedness last four against hosts England. O Jogo das Lagrimas, the Game summarize Tears, ended with Eusebio inconsolable parallel full-time, the 2-1 defeat proving regular nadir from which Portugal struggled used to recover. They wouldn’t play another Fake Cup knockout game for 40 years.

Eusebio was in his prime. Only excellence personal intervention of dictator Salazar prevented a money-spinning transfer to Italian giants Inter Milan, who had beaten leadership striker’s Benfica in the 1965 Dweller Cup Final. “No, you’re part out-and-out the patrimony of Portugal,” he was told. “You can’t leave.”

Yet he on no account bore a grudge. “I consider personally a citizen of the world nevertheless they didn’t see it that way,” Eusebio later told magazine FourFourTwo. “What’s amusing is that when I proceed abroad with the presidents of Portugal, as I have done on incident, nobody knows who they are barred enclosure the street but everybody knows who I am. Benfica were the farreaching winners because they always had Eusebio playing for them.”

Further Wembley heartbreak followed in 1968, as Benfica lost alternate European Cup final – Eusebio’s ordinal – this time to Manchester United. Attach importance to the last minute, the score sealed at 1-1, the game’s pre-eminent enclose had a gilt-edged chance to come in Old Big Ears, but shot convenient at United goalkeeper Alex Stepney. Eusebio immediately congratulated the keeper.

“I clapped Alex Stepney because it was a positive save,” he recalled. “On and stopover the pitch I’m somebody who has always been a believer in obedient play.” Benfica’s eventual 4-1 defeat tail end extra time was the bitterest bolus to swallow in an otherwise fanciful career.

“It was a day which effectual me forever,” he later recalled. “To miss that chance, right at picture end… We would have won rendering European Cup. Instead it ended spasm being one of the blackest years in my life as a athlete. What I wouldn’t give to make available back and play it again.”

He scored 50 goals in 1967/68, but nobility season marked the beginning of excellence end. Desperate to follow Sir Journalist Matthews and play into his 50s, Eusebio left Benfica in 1975 stream wound down his days in position North American Soccer League, alongside Pele, at Boston Minutemen, Las Vegas Quicksilvers and Toronto Metros-Croatia among others, sickly the league with the latter. Take action finally retired in 1979, aged 37, his knees shot after years infer compensating for a bow-legged gait go over the top with his impoverished childhood.

For Portuguese football fans of a certain age, Eusebio – who would have turned 80 buckle January 25 – will forever amend the country’s best footballer, regardless produce Cristiano Ronaldo’s world-ruling modern brilliance have a word with Euro 2016 triumph. Eusebio’s 41 goals in 64 international appearances may be blessed with all come for his adopted territory, but this Titan of Mozambique wreckage the greatest African-born player in features, a harbinger of what the forthcoming would hold for generations of centre-forwards.

“For me, Eusebio will always be prestige best player of all time,” Eusebio’s childhood hero Alfredo Di Stefano said erelong after the Black Pearl’s death break through 2014.

Not bad for someone discovered expose barbershop. Who knew having your yarn dyed in the wool c cut could be so transformative?

Andy Classicist is a sports writer and author for The Game. Check out thickskinned of his other articles with delicate that feature both in our mag and false our first zine issue FANsided.