Eusébio

Eusébio da Silva Ferreira (; 25 January 1942 – 5 January 2014), nicknamed the "Black Panther", the "Black Pearl" or "O Rei" ("The King"), was a Portuguese footballer who played as a striker. He is considered one of the greatest players of all time as well as Benfica's best player ever. He was known for his speed, technique, athleticism and right-footed shot, making him a prolific goalscorer, accumulating 733 goals in 745 matches. Eusébio was the first ever player to win European Golden Boot, World Cup Golden Boot and UCL Golden Boot.

Eusébio helped Portugal reach third place at the 1966 FIFA World Cup, being the top goalscorer of the tournament with nine goals. He remains Portugal's all-time top scorer at the World Cup. He won the Ballon d'Or in 1965 and was runner-up in 1962 and 1966. He is Benfica's all-time top scorer with 473 goals in 440 competitive matches. There, his honours include eleven Primeira Liga titles and a European Cup, also being integral in reaching additional European Cup finals in 1963, 1965 and 1968. He is the second-highest goalscorer, behind Alfredo Di Stéfano, in the pre-Champions League era of the European Cup with 48 goals. He was the European Cup top scorer in 1964–65, 1965–66 and 1967–68. He also won the Bola de Prata for the Primeira Liga top scorer a record seven times. He was the first ever player to win the European Golden Boot, in 1968, a feat he replicated in 1973.

From his retirement until his death, Eusébio was an ambassador of football and was one of the most recognizable faces of his generation. His name often appears in best player of all time lists and polls by football critics and fans. He was elected the ninth-best footballer of the 20th century in a poll by the IFFHS and the tenth-best footballer of the 20th century in a poll by the World Soccer magazine. Pelé named Eusébio as one of the 125 best living footballers in his 2004 FIFA 100 list. He was seventh in the online poll for UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll. In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA's Jubilee, he was selected as the Golden Player of Portugal by the Portuguese Football Federation as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years. Shortly after Eusébio's death, Di Stéfano stated: "For me Eusébio will always be the best player of all time".

Early life

Eusébio was born in the Mafalala neighbourhood, Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), Portuguese Mozambique on 25 January 1942. His parents were Laurindo António da Silva Ferreira, a white railroad worker from Malanje, Portuguese Angola, and his wife Elisa Anissabeni, a black Mozambican woman. He was the fourth child of his parents, out of five children they had (Jaime, Alberto, Adelino, Eusébio and Lucília). Elisa Anissabeni later had another three children from a second marriage (Gilberto, Inocência and Fernando). Growing up in an extremely poor neighbourhood, he used to skip school classes to play barefoot football with his friends on improvised pitches and using improvised footballs. His father also played football in his youth and supported Lisbon's SL Benfica and its affiliate team in Portuguese Mozambique, Grupo Desportivo de Lourenço Marques. He died from tetanus when Eusébio was eight years old in 1950, so the widowed Elisa almost exclusively raised young Eusébio alone. Absorbed by football from an early age, Eusébio studied until the 4th grade (concluded through a final exam when he was already in mainland Portugal), the only among his brothers and sisters without post-primary education. Three of his siblings became engineers.

Club career

Early career

Eusébio first started to play for a local amateur team called ''Os Brasileiros'' (The Brazilians), in honour of the great Brazil national team of the 1950s that he and his friends formed, they would play under the names of some of those superstars. The balls they used were made of socks stuffed with newspapers rolled into spheres.

Sporting Lourenço Marques

With some friends, Eusébio tried to join Desportivo de Lourenço de Marques, his favourite team and a Benfica feeder team (also the team where Mário Coluna had played before his move to Benfica) but was rejected, without even being given a chance to prove his worth. He was also rejected by Ferroviário de Lourenço Marques. At 12, he then tried his luck with Sporting Clube de Lourenço Marques (branch number 6 of Sporting Lisbon), which accepted him as well as a group of his friends who lived in Eusébio's neighbourhood. There he had his first training sessions supervised by a coaching staff, received his first ever football equipment and played competitive football in an organized way at both youth level and the main senior team. At 15, according to him, he was spotted by a former Juventus goalkeeper turned scout: "When I was 15, Juventus of Italy, wanted to hire me, because one of their scouts, who had been a famous Italian goalkeeper for them, saw me and told them that there was a boy with a potential, that it would be good to take advantage while I was still unknown. Juventus proposed but my mum never wanted to hear anything from anyone". Eusébio played his first two seasons with Sporting Lourenço Marques' youth team while he also made a few appearances in the senior team. Then he was promoted to the main squad and won the Campeonato Provincial de Moçambique and the Campeonato Distrital de Lourenço Marques in his last season with the club, in 1960. From 1957 to 1960, Eusébio scored 77 goals in 42 appearances for the main team of Sporting Lourenço Marques.

Benfica

The transfer

On 15 December 1960, Eusébio arrived in Lisbon, when he was 18 years old, but he only joined Benfica in May 1961, as a 19-year-old, after the transfer from his local club Sporting Lourenço Marques for 400,000 Portuguese escudos (equivalent to €193,219 in 2023) was finally unlocked. It was a lengthy process and the legality of the signing was disputed by Sporting CP, who also tried to sign him. In the first few weeks of 1961, the Portuguese Directorate-General for Sports ruled in favour of Sporting CP's interests; soon after, the Portuguese Football Federation ruled in favour of Benfica's arguments. The agreement to sign Eusébio with Benfica's local representative (Rodrigues de Carvalho, a major) had been mediated in Mozambique, in June 1960, by one of Eusébio's brothers who was an engineer by training and intervened as an informal sports agent on behalf of his brother, and included the payment of 250,000 Portuguese escudos to Elisa Anissabene, Eusébio's mother (an initial offer of 110,000 escudos which raised to the final 250,000 escudos in November amid growing interest from other football clubs). Benfica discovered Eusébio through the efforts of Brazilian former player José Carlos Bauer, who saw him at Lourenço Marques in 1960. Although he preferred playing with his right foot, Eusébio could use his left just as well. At times, Eusébio would surprise opponents with his dribbling ability, seemingly a talent he preferred to keep secret. Bauer first recommended Eusébio to his former club, São Paulo, but the ''Tricolor'' turned him down.

Bauer had been asked by his former coach at São Paulo, Béla Guttmann, to keep an eye out for talented players during a ten-week tour to Africa, and when São Paulo could not afford the asking price for Eusébio, Bauer then recommended him to Guttmann, who was coaching Benfica at the time."Os vice-campeões", Max Gehringer, ''Especial Placar: A Saga da Jules Rimet'' fascículo 4 – 1950 Brasil, dezembro de 2005, Editora Abril, págs. 46–47 Guttman moved quickly and signed him.

Sporting Lourenço Marques was an affiliate team of Sporting CP, and the Portuguese club disputed the legality of his transfer to Benfica. Eusébio once said: "I used to play for Sporting's feeder club in Mozambique. Benfica wanted to pay me in a contract to go o Portugalwhile Sporting wanted to take me as a junior player for the experience with no monetary reward. Benfica made a nice approach. They went to speak to my mum, my brother, and offered €1,000 for three years. My brother asked for double and they paid it. They signed the contract with my mother and she got the money. ..Sporting tried to spread the story that I'd stitched them up, but it was the other way round, because they tried to take me for free while Benfica were willing to pay."

Hilário, a friend of Eusébio since childhood and former colleague at the Mozambican club, tried to convince Eusébio to go to Sporting CP. Hilário went to Benfica's dorms, met Eusébio there and Eusébio left the building with Hilário. On behalf of Sporting CP, Hilário offered him an improved professional contract instead of a trial period at the club. Sporting CP's contract offer was double Benfica's, included the necessary funds to allow financial compensation to Benfica for the incurred costs to date, and, according to Hilário, he was successful in that endeavor, but at the end of the day he left Eusébio to rest overnight back in the dorms. Benfica found this meeting suspicious and instructed Eusébio to be codenamed Ruth Malosso. Moreover, fearing a "kidnapping" attempt by Sporting CP, Benfica moved Eusébio on 8 April 1961 to a holiday home owned by Domingos Claudino, former president of Benfica, and a hotel near the Meia Praia beach, in Lagos, Algarve region, where he would remain for twelve days until the transfer upheaval calmed down (Eusébio was awarded his 4th grade diploma while he was hidden in the Algarve). Fearing that Eusébio would "escape", Benfica's representatives reportedly warned him of the "danger of being run over". Eusébio then told his mother: "Mum, I'm going back because there are men here who want to hurt me." In the early hours of 13 May 1961, those in charge of Eusébio's transfer to Benfica occasionally bumped into Jaime Catarino Duarte, son of António Catarino Duarte who was the president of the club at the time, and the son of the president wanted to know where the case stood. He was told that almost everything had been taken care of, with just 400,000 escudos (400 '' contos'') missing before Eusébio could finally be registered by Benfica. Catarino Duarte provided the necessary funds and the transfer was finalized.

Debut and career

The transferring of Eusébio's registration from Sporting Lourenço Marques to Benfica was concluded and he made his first appearance for them against Atlético Clube de Portugal in a friendly game on 23 May 1961. He scored a hat-trick in a 4–2 victory. His debut in an official match was on 1 June 1961, against Vitória de Setúbal, in the third round second leg of the 1960–61 Taça de Portugal. The game was controversially scheduled for the day after the European Cup final against Barcelona and the Portuguese Football Federation did not postpone it. As the first team was returning from Bern, Benfica played with the reserve squad and was defeated 1–4. Eusébio scored a goal and missed a penalty (the first of only five he missed throughout his career), but this was not enough to win the round (4–5 on aggregate). On 10 June 1961, Eusébio played for the first time in the Primeira Divisão, the last match day against Belenenses, where he scored a goal in a 4–0 win. On 15 June, Benfica played the final of the invitational Tournoi de Paris against Pelé's Santos, and in the beginning of the second half, with Benfica down 0–4, Béla Guttmann decided to bring Eusébio from the bench to substitute Santana. Shortly after coming in, Santos reached 0–5. However, between the 63rd and the 80th minute, Eusébio scored 3 goals and suffered a foul inside the penalty area, the penalty taker, José Augusto, failed to score though. The game finished 6–3 for Santos, with Eusébio being on the cover of the famed French sporting newspaper ''L'Équipe''.

His following season was the one where he started to gain global recognition among football fans and critics alike. He scored 12 goals in 17 league matches, and even though the club finished third, they won the Taça de Portugal against Vitória de Setúbal, with Eusébio scoring two goals in the final. In that same season, he won the European Cup, also scoring two goals in the final against Real Madrid in a 5–3 result to Benfica. Due to his fine form during the season, he finished second in the 1962 Ballon d'Or, in his first complete season as a professional. In October 1963, he was selected to represent the FIFA team in the "Golden Anniversary" of The Football Association at Wembley Stadium.

Benfica were also European Cup runners-up in 1963, 1965 and 1968. In the 1968 defeat to the English league champions Manchester United at Wembley Stadium, with the scores 1–1, he came close to winning the game for Benfica in the dying seconds of the game, only to have his shot saved by Alex Stepney. Despite this, and the fact that the English side went on to win 4–1 in extra time, he openly congratulated Stepney for his efforts throughout the game, stopping to applaud Stepney, as he threw the ball back into play.

He received a number of individual accolades and awards while playing for Benfica. He was the 1965 European Footballer of the Year (Ballon d'Or) and finished as runner-up twice, in 1962 and 1966, and in 1968 was the first winner of the Golden Boot Award, as Europe's leading scorer, a feat he repeated five years later. He was the Portuguese First Division's top scorer seven times (1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970 and 1973), helping Benfica to win 11 Primeira Liga (1960–61, 1962–63, 1963–64, 1964–65, 1966–67, 1967–68, 1968–69, 1970–71, 1971–72, 1972–73 and 1974–75), 5 Portuguese Cup wins (1961–62, 1963–64, 1968–69, 1969–70 and 1971–72), 1 European Cup win (1961–62) and 3 European Cup finals (1962–63, 1964–65 and 1967–68).

Eusébio scored 473 goals in 440 official matches for Benfica, including 317 goals in 301 Primeira Liga matches, and 59 goals in 78 matches of UEFA club competitions. Overall, he scored 727 goals in 715 matches wearing Benfica's jersey.

Later career

In 1976–77 and 1977–78, Eusébio played for two smaller Portuguese clubs, Beira-Mar, in the first division, and União de Tomar