Garrincha

The definitive biography of the greatest winger the world has ever seen - the only footballer on the planet capable of overshadowing Pele. 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. 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 in 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. Born in rural Brazil in 1933, the 'Little Bird' came to football by accident, discovered at the 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 mesmerising on it - mischievous, audacious and dripping with sex appeal, over the course of his life he fathered at least thirteen children with different women. really caught the imagination of a nation - their mouth-watering combination of football and samba made them the toast of 1960s Rio. But by the age of forty-nine, Garrincha was dead, a victim of the lifestyle that had eventually destroyed him. Garrincha defied the odds stacked against him at birth to become the 'Joy of the People'. With his inventiveness, impertinence, and sheer brilliance he was an architect of the footballing magic that we now associate with Brazil's 'beautiful game'. Ruy Castro's wonderful biography charts the extraordinary rise and fall of a flawed sporting legend, and a tragically human hero.