Retro Football: Six Glorious Minutes Of Garrincha Shimmying, Feinting And Dribbling Defenders Into Oblivion (Video)

Chris Wright

14th, February 2018

4 Comments

Embed from Getty Images

Not sure why, but we’re having a bit of a Garrincha day here on Pies, so it’s only right be bring you some moving pictures of the man in motion.

A progenitor of what we’d now recognise as fundamental wing play, Garrincha’s fortitude was his imperious dribbling skills, perhaps aided by the asymmetric centre of balance his various birth defects combined to create.

One minute he was going this way; a befuddling shimmy of the torso and a flick of the legs later, he was heading off in that…

A little snippet of trivia for you: The Brazilian national team never lost a single match when both Garrincha and Pele were on the pitch together, and the former only ever lost once while playing for the Selecao.

Indeed, after making his debut in 1955, the first time Garrincha tasted defeat in an international match was against Hungary in the group stage of the 1966 World Cup in England – the last appearance he ever made for his country.

Not a bad run, in anybody’s book.

Posted in Retro, Skills, South America

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4 Comments

  1. akunt says:

    But can he do it on a cold rainy night in Stoke?

  2. Oi says:

    Football was so naive back then. The dribles were so easy, I can’t understand why nobody could stop him. Actually I can, because they were all fucking butchers during the day and footballers at night.
    Football became football from the late 70s / 80s on. Prior to that, it was just a small bunch of very talented individuals against the very rubbish majority. That’s why Pele has scored more than 1000 times and that’s why I regard Ronaldo, Messi, etc so much higher than those guys. They play against great players every week while Pele and co. only faced great players at world cup finals ever 4 years.

    • Jean Neymar says:

      Pelé scored 1000 goals, but if it was so easy, other players would have done it, no ? Garrincha body feints are simple, but he was the only one to do so. It was uniqu eat that time. Just because football wasn’t as pro as today doesnt mean Pelé, Garrincha, Di Stefano or else were’nt great. They were the greatest at their time.

      Your reasoning is biased. That’d be like saying Henry Ford was not that good because he didnt manufactured Bugatti Chirons.

  3. JP says:

    It’s all a lot of fun, but isn’t football so much better now that there are defenders who can tackle?

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