Garrincha Print, Vintage Football Poster, Brasile Retro Wall Art, Sports Gift, Black and White Sports Print

GARRINCHA — a LostTeams editorial print telling the existing story of Garrincha, 1955-1966.

Manuel Francisco dos Santos was born in Pau Grande in 1933 with a deformed spine, one leg turned inward, the other turned outward and about six centimetres shorter. Doctors said he would not play football.

His sister called him Garrincha, after a small useless bird.

Those legs are the whole thing. The most famous dribble in the history of the game was performed by a man whose body could not produce a normal running action, and the defect became the weapon: he could shift his weight in directions that a symmetrical body cannot.

He did the same move for fifteen years. Everyone knew it. He would go outside, plant, and cut back inside, or pretend to and go outside anyway. Full-backs were told about it in team meetings. It made no difference.

In 1958 he was left out of Brazil's first two matches at the World Cup because the team psychologist judged him unsuitable. The players went to the manager and asked for him. Brazil won the tournament.

In 1962, in Chile, Pele was injured in the second match and did not play again. Garrincha won the World Cup nearly on his own: two goals against England, two against Chile, and a performance level that neutral reporters described as beyond anything they had seen.

Brazil did not lose a match in which Garrincha and Pele both started. The record is fifty-something games without defeat.

The 1962 quarter final against England is the match to look up. He scored with his head, which for a man of five foot six against Bobby Moore's defence was not the expected route, and then with a shot from outside the area, and Brazil won three to one in Vina del Mar.

He did not manage money, did not manage alcohol, and had eight daughters with his first wife before a much-publicised relationship with the singer Elza Soares.

He died in January 1983 of cirrhosis, at forty-nine, broke. Enormous crowds came out in Rio for the funeral. The words painted on a wall for it are the ones people still quote: thank you for having lived.

Hang it. One day someone will ask you what it is, and you will know where to begin.