Publisher's Synopsis
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 Pele, 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 grotesquely deformed legs, he looked as if he could barely walk, but with a ball at his feet he had the poise of an angel. Born Manuel dos Santos in rural Brazil in 1933, 'Little Bird' or Garrincha as he came to be known, came to football by accident, discovered at the late age of nineteen by a scout for Botafogo. He played football only for the love of it, uninterested in money, and ignoring advice about tactics. And he was as wild off the pitch as he was brilliant on it - mischievous, audacious and dripping with sex appeal, over the course of his life he fathered at least thirteen children with different women. It was his affair and subsequent marriage to the singer Elza Soares that really caught the imagination of a nation - their mouth-watering combination of football and samba made
