Goal by Severino
It was 1943. Boca Juniors was playing against River Plate’s “Machine” in Argentina’s soccer classic.
Boca was down by a goal when the referee whistled a foul at the edge of the River area. Sosa took the free kick. Rather than shoot on goal, he served up a center pass looking for Severino Varela’s head. The ball came down way ahead of Varela. River’s rear guard had an easy play, Severino was nowhere near it. But the veteran striker took off and flew through the air, clawing past several defenders until he connected with a devastating beret-blow that vanquished the goalkeeper.
His fans called him the “phantom beret” because he would fly uninvited into the goalmouth. Severino had quite a few years of experience and plenty of recognition with the Uruguayan club Peñarol by the time he went to Buenos Aires wearing the undefeated look of a mischievous child and a white beret perched on his skull.
With Boca he sparkled. Still, every Sunday at nightfall after the match, Severino would take the boat back to Montevideo, to his neighborhood, his friends, and his job at the factory.
Bombs
While war tormented the world, Rio de Janeiro’s dailies announced a London blitz on the playing field of the club Bangu. In the middle of 1943, a match was to be played against São Cristovão, and Bangu’s fans planned to send four thousand fireworks aloft, the largest bombardment in the history of soccer.
When the Bangu players took the field and the gunpowder thunder and lightning began, São Cristovão’s manager locked his players in the dressing room and stuck cotton in their ears. As long as the fireworks lasted, and they lasted a long time, the dressing room floor shook, the walls shook, and the players shook too, all of them huddled with their heads in their hands, teeth clenched, eyes screwed shut, convinced that the World War had come home. Those who weren’t epileptic must have had malaria, the way they were shaking when they stepped onto the field. The sky was black with smoke. Bangu creamed them.
A short while later, there was to be a match between the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo teams. Once again, war clouds threatened and the dailies predicted another Pearl Harbor, a siege of Leningrad, and other cataclysms. The Paulistas knew that the loudest bang ever heard awaited them in Rio. Then the São Paulo manager had a brainwave: instead of hiding in the dressing room, his players would take the field at the same time as the Cariocas. That way instead of scaring them, the bombardment would be a greeting.
And that is what happened, only São Paulo lost anyway, 6–1.
The Man Who Turned Iron into Wind
Eduardo Chillida played goal for Real Sociedad in the Basque city of San Sebastián. Tall and skinny, he had a style of blocking shots that was his very own, and both Barcelona and Real Madrid had their eyes on him. The experts were predicting the boy would succeed Zamora.
But destiny had other plans. In 1943 a rival striker, appropriately named Sañudo, which means “enraged,” smashed Chillida’s meniscus and everything else. After five operations on his knee, Chillida bid goodbye to soccer and became a sculptor.
Thus was born one of the greatest artists of the century. Chillida works with materials so heavy they sink into the earth, but his powerful hands toss iron and reinforced concrete into the air, where they discover other spaces and create new dimensions on the fly. He used to do the same thing in the goal with his body.
Contact Therapy
Enrique Pichon-Rivière spent his entire life piercing the mysteries of human sadness and helping to crack open our cages of silence.
In soccer he found an effective ally. Back in the 1940s, Pichon-Rivière organized a team among his patients at the insane asylum. These locos were unbeatable on the playing fields of the Argentine littoral, and playing was their best therapy.
“Team strategy is my priority,” said the psychiatrist, who was also the team’s manager and top scorer.
Half a century later, we urban beings are all more or less crazy, even though due to space limitations nearly all of us live outside the asylum. Evicted by cars, cornered by violence, condemned to isolation, we live packed in ever closer to one another and feel ever more alone, with ever fewer meeting places and ever less time to meet.
In soccer, as in everything else, consumers are far more numerous than creators. Asphalt covers the empty lots where people used to pick up a match, and work devours our leisure time. Most people don’t play, they just watch others play on television or from stands that lie ever farther from the field. Like Carnival, soccer has become a mass spectator sport. But just like Carnival spectators who start dancing in the streets, in soccer there are always a few admiring fans who kick the ball every so often out of sheer joy. And not only children. For better or for worse, though the fields are as far away as can be, friends from the neighborhood or workmates from the factory, the office, or the faculty still get together to play for fun until they collapse exhausted. And then winners and losers go off together to drink and smoke and share a good meal, pleasures denied the professional athlete.
Sometimes women take part too and score their own goals, though in general the macho tradition keeps them exiled from these fiestas of communication.
Goal by Martino
It was 1946. The Uruguayan club Nacional was beating San Lorenzo from Argentina, so they closed up their defensive lines to meet the threat from René Pontoni and Rinaldo Martino, players who were known for making the ball speak and who had the unfortunate habit of scoring.
Martino got to the edge of Nacional’s area. There he retained the ball and caressed it as if he had all the time in the world. Suddenly Pontoni crossed like lightning toward the right corner. Martino paused, raised his head, looked at him. Then the Nacional defenders all jumped on Pontoni, and while the greyhounds pursued the rabbit Martino entered the box like a parrot into his cage, eluded the remaining fullback, shot, and scored.
The goal was Martino’s but it also belonged to Pontoni, who knew how to confound the enemy.
Goal by Heleno
It was 1947. Botafogo against Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro. Botafogo striker Heleno de Freitas scored a chest goal.
Heleno had his back to the net. The ball flew down from above. He trapped it with his chest and whipped around without letting it fall. With his back arched and the ball still resting on his chest, he surveyed the scene. Between him and the goal stood a multitude. There were more people in Flamengo’s area than in all Brazil. If the ball hit the ground he was lost. So Heleno started walking and calmly crossed the enemy lines with his body curved back and the ball on his chest. No one could knock it off him now without committing a foul, and he was in the goal area. When Heleno reached the goalmouth, he straightened up. The ball slid to his feet and he scored.
Heleno de Freitas was clearly a Gypsy. He had Rudolph Valentino’s face and the temper of a mad dog. On the playing field, he sparkled.
One night at the casino he lost all his money. Another night, who knows where, he lost all his desire to live. And on his last night, delirious in a hospice, he died.