Garrincha: The Triumph and Tragedy of Brazil's Forgotten Footballing Hero - Softcover

Castro, Ruy

4.42

684 ratings by Goodreads

9780224092197: Garrincha: The Triumph and Tragedy of Brazil's Forgotten Footballing Hero

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224092197 ISBN 13: 9780224092197

Publisher: Yellow Jersey, 2013

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The World Cup Finals, Sweden 1958. Brazil vs the fearsome USSR. In the opening three minutes - 'the greatest three minutes in the history of football' - one man wrote himself into the record books alongside the game's greatest players, men like Pel�, Di Stefano, Puskas and Maradona. Brazil went on to win the cup, and, in Garrincha, a star was born.

Garrincha was the unlikeliest of footballers - with a right leg that turned inwards and a left that turned out, he looked as if he could barely walk, but with a ball at his feet he had the poise of an angel. He played for the love of the game, uninterested in money, and ignoring tactical advice. And he was as wild off the pitch as he was mesmerising on it - mischievous, audacious and dripping with sex appeal.

It was his affair and subsequent marriage to the singer Elza Soares that caught the imagination of a nation - their mouth-watering combination of soccer and samba made them the toast of 1960s Rio. But by the age of forty-nine, Garrincha was dead, destroyed by the excesses that made him so compelling.

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Review:

"Castro's biography is funny and moving, zealously researched and lovingly told. This excellent new translation by Andrew Downie means English readers can properly appreciate one of the most incredible lives in the history of sport" --Alex Bellos, Daily Telegraph

"[A] powerfully atmospheric and beautifully rendered life of one of Brazil's greatest ever players... A sad and fantastic book" --Harry Pearson, When Saturday Comes

"A compelling page-turner, warts and all" --Scotland on Sunday

From the Publisher:

The definitive biography of the greatest winger the world has ever seen.

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