Manuel dos Santos (28 October 1933 – 20 January 1983) was a Brazilian football player. He played for Brazil national team. Garrincha, the nickname "little bird" he got from his sister. He won the 1962 World Cup in Chile with Brazil after Pelé was injured. He is regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time and considered one of the best dribblers and by many the greatest dribbler ever. At the height of his career, he signed Manoel dos Santos, in honor of a homonymous uncle, who helped him a lot. Garrincha is also widely recognised as the finest dribbler in football history.
Garrincha's best talent certainly consisted in his very particular dribbling, a game that he performed in making two different types of movements: cutting towards the inside of the field or, typically, widening to the right, always starting with the ball and chain from his own area of expertise, placed near the sideline of the pitch. In the second case, his actions were rather repetitive, without affecting the success of the feint; Garrincha, after receiving the ball on the wing, aimed at the direct opponent and then stopped, causing the marker to stop in turn, after which he threw himself to the right, subsequently folding on the opposite side. The winger repeated the play more than once, when he decided to overtake the now disoriented defender with a definitive acceleration again on the right. Dribbling was made particularly effective by the explosiveness of the shot and the unpredictability of the movements due to the asymmetry of the lower limbs. Garrincha often abused this skill, as he used to dribble opponents and wait for them to retrace their steps so as to overcome them a second time, for pure pleasure; in a match valid for the Rio-San Paolo tournament that Botafogo played against América, the referee threatened to expel him due to the excessive number of dribbles carried out at the expense of full-back Ivan.
Despite having been afflicted with several birth defects (he had strabismus, an imbalance of the pelvis, six centimeters of length difference between the legs; the right knee had valgus and the left varus), Garrincha, "The Anjo de Pernas Tortas", was one of the main players in the 1958 FIFA World Cup and, especially, the 1962 FIFA World Cup, when, after Pelé's injury, he became the main player of the Brazilian team. Of Brazil's 14 goals in the competition, six (42%) went through his feet (he scored four and provided two assists for goals). In this tournament, he became the first player to win the Golden Ball (best player in the tournament), the Golden Boot (the competition's top scorer) and the World Cup trophy in the same edition. Because of this, the 1962 World Cup is known in Brazil as "The Garrincha Cup".
Included in the Football Team of the 20th Century by 250 of the world's most respected football writers and journalists, he was selected in 1994 for the FIFA World Cup All-Time Team and ranked seventh in a vote among FIFA experts. about the best player of the 20th century.
Garrincha was a heavy drinker who died of cirrhosis in 1983.
Biography
Garrincha was born in 1933 in Pau Grande, a small town near Rio de Janeiro. At birth, it was found that his left leg was turned outwards and that his right leg was six centimeters shorter and turned inwards. Despite, or perhaps because of this handicap, Garrincha went on to become a highly technical footballer and one of the greatest dribblers of all time. Garrincha was a great footballer, but in his private life he had a lot of problems. He was a heavy drinker and was involved in a car accident several times. In 1969, his mother-in-law was killed in one of these accidents.
Garrincha married twice. The first time with Nair Marques, a factory girl from his hometown of Pau Grande, and the second time with Elza Soares, a well-known samba singer. But in addition, Garrincha had several other affairs and in total he left behind thirteen children after his death, one of which was in Sweden.
In the spring of 1959, Garrincha had an affair with a waitress from the players' hotel in Umeå, after a Botafogo friendly match in Sweden. Nine months later, a letter was delivered to him in Rio de Janeiro saying that Garrincha had fathered a son. His Swedish grandson, Martin Lindberg, also had an aptitude for football and played as a right winger as a youth player for Halmstads BK, but had to finish football at level after he tore his knee ligament in 2009.