France took third place and West Germany fourth. Fontaine of France led the list of scorers with a shower of thirteen goals, eight with the right leg, four with the left, and one with his head, followed by Pelé and Helmut Rahn of Germany, who scored six apiece.
Goal by Nílton
It was at the World Cup in 1958. Brazil was leading Austria 1–0.
At the beginning of the second half, the key to the Brazilian defense, Nílton Santos, who was called “The Encyclopedia” for his vast knowledge of soccer, abandoned the rear guard, passed the center line, eluded a pair of opposing players, and kept going. The Brazilian manager, Vicente Feola, was also running but on the other side of the touchline. Sweating buckets, he screamed, “Go back! Go back!”
Nílton, unflappable, continued his race toward the enemy area. A fat and desperate Feola clutched his head, but Nílton refused to pass the ball to any of the forwards. He made the play entirely on his own and it culminated in a tremendous goal.
Then a happy Feola said, “Did you see that? Didn’t I tell you? This one really knows!”
Garrincha
One of his many brothers baptized him Garrincha, the name of an ugly, useless little bird. When he started playing soccer, doctors made the sign of the cross. They predicted this misshapen survivor of hunger and polio, dumb and lame, with the brain of an infant, a spinal column like an S, and both legs bowed to the same side, would never be an athlete.
There never was another right winger like him. In the 1958 World Cup he was the best in his position, in ’62 the best player in the championship. But throughout his many years on the field, Garrincha was more: in the entire history of soccer no one made more people happy.
When he was playing, the field became a circus ring, the ball a tame beast, the game an invitation to a party. Like a child defending his pet, Garrincha would not let go of the ball, and together the ball and he would perform devilish tricks that had people in stitches. He would jump on her, she would hop on him, she would hide, he would escape, she would chase after him. In the process, the opposing players would crash into each other, their legs twisting around until they would fall, seasick, on their behinds. Garrincha did his rascal’s mischief at the edge of the field, along the right touchline, far from the center: raised in the shantytown suburbs, that’s where he preferred to play. His club was Botafogo, which means “firelighter,” and he was the botafogo who fired up the fans crazed by firewater and all things fiery. He was the one who would climb out of the training camp window because he heard from some far-off back alley the call of a ball asking to be played with, music demanding to be danced to, a woman wanting to be kissed.
A winner? A loser with incredible luck. And luck doesn’t last. As they say in Brazil, if shit was worth anything, the poor would be born without asses.
Garrincha died a predictable death: poor, drunk, and alone.
Didi
The press named him the best playmaker of the 1958 World Cup.
He was the hub of the Brazilian team. Lean body, long neck, poised statue of himself, Didi looked like an African icon standing at the center of the field, where he ruled. From there he would shoot his poison arrows.
He was a master of the deep pass, a near goal that would become a real goal on the feet of Pelé, Garrincha, or Vavá, but he also scored on his own. Shooting from afar, he used to fool goalkeepers with the “dry leaf”: by giving the ball his foot’s profile, she would leave the ground spinning and continue spinning on the fly, dancing about and changing direction like a dry leaf carried by the wind, until she flew between the posts precisely where the goalkeeper least expected.
Didi played unhurriedly. Pointing at the ball, he would say: “She’s the one who runs.”
He knew she was alive.
Didi and She
I always felt a lot of affection for her. Because if you don’t treat her with affection, she won’t obey. When she’d come, I’d take charge and she’d obey. Sometimes she’d go one way and I’d say, “Come here, child,” and I’d bring her along. I’d take care of her blisters and warts and she’d always sit there, obedient as can be. I’d treat her with as much affection as I give my own wife. I had tremendous affection for her. Because she’s fire. If you treat her badly, she’ll break your leg. That’s why I say, “Boys, come on, have some respect. This is a girl that has to be treated with a lot of love…” Depending on the spot where you touch her, she’ll choose your fate.
From an interview by Roberto Moura
Kopa
They called him “the Napoleon of soccer” because he was short and he liked to conquer territory.
With the ball on his foot he grew taller and dominated the field. Raymond Kopa was a player of great mobility and florid moves, who would draw arabesques on the grass as he danced his way toward the goal. Coaches pulled their hair out watching him have so much fun with the ball, and French commentators often accused him of the crime of having a South American style. But at the ’58 World Cup, the press named Kopa to the “dream team” and that year he won the Ballon d’Or for being the best player in Europe.
Soccer had pulled him out of misery. He started out on a team of miners. The son of Polish immigrants, Kopa spent his childhood at his father’s side in the Noeux coal pits. He would go down every night and emerge the following afternoon.
Carrizo
He spent a quarter of a century catching balls with magnetic hands and sowing panic in the enemy camp. Amadeo Carrizo founded a style of South American play. He was the first goalkeeper who had the audacity to leave the penalty area and lead the attack. Heightening the danger, on more than one occasion this Argentine even took the enormous risk of dribbling past opposing players. Before Carrizo, such insanity was unthinkable. Then his audacity caught on. His compatriot Gatti, the Colombian Higuita, and the Paraguayan Chilavert also refused to resign themselves to the notion that the keeper is a living wall, glued to the net. They proved he can also be a living spear.
As we all know, fans delight in hating the enemy: rival players always deserve condemnation or scorn. But Argentine fans of all stripes praise Carrizo, and all but one or two agree that on that country’s playing fields no one ever blocked shots as well as he did. Nevertheless, in 1958 when the Argentine team returned with their tails between their legs after the World Cup in Sweden, it was the idol who caught the most heat. Argentina had been beaten by Czechoslovakia 6–1, and such a misdeed demanded a public expiation. The press pilloried him, the crowds hissed and whistled, and Carrizo was crushed. Years later in his memoirs he confessed sadly: “I always recall the goals they scored on me rather than the shots I blocked.”