By celebrating Brazil’s victory over England at the 1962 World Cup, in a text published in Manchete magazine, Nelson Rodrigues pointed out that “we had no queens, no common chamber, nor lords Nelsons”. “But we had Garrincha. And we had Zagallo, that of fine and spectral shins,” noted the chronicler, before concluding: “and Nilton Santos, with his salubérinim eternity.”
It was a reference to the age of the left back, whose call at the age of 37 had been quite contested. The carioca of the island of the governor almost refused the call, but was convinced to dispute his fourth world, embarked on Chile and had an important participation in the conquest of BI.
Some time ago.
But Nilton Santos, born on May 16, 1925, is a rare case of well -preserved memory of Brazilian football. Although it has played at a time of few recorded images, it is almost a unanimous choice in the world selections of all time – it is, for example, in the one released by FIFA (International Football Federation) in 1998.
This centenary week, he has received honors from Botafogo, a club he acted throughout his career, and his fans. The stadium itself used by the club, built in Engenho de Dentro, in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, for the 2007 Pan American Games, went in 2017 to be called Nilton Santos Olympic Stadium. His statue in the East Sector became a tourist spot.
There is no shortage of stars in the history of the alvinegro club, a list of names like Manga, Quarentinha, Didi, Garrincha and Heleno de Freitas. But the text in which the association released the celebrations of Nilton’s 100th anniversary pointed out, without the risk of committing an exaggeration, that he is the “greatest idol with Botafogo Football and Regatta.”
Santos defended Botafogo Football and Regatta from 1948 to 1964. There were 723 matches, to this day the team record, with four titles of the Carioca Championship and two from the Rio-Sao Paulo Tournament. In the national team, he triumphed in the 1958 and 1962 World Cups.
The prophecy of Carlito Rocha, the Botafogo leader’s folkloric, who saw Nilton’s tests from General Severiano’s stands. “You have a defense physicist. Forget the attack, boy. In defense, you will be Rio champion, Brazilian, South American and world,” said Carlito, according to Nilton’s report.
The prophecy, in the sake of truth, was only partially fulfilled. Santos won everything, in fact. But did not forget the attack. Heir of Domingos da Guia, he became a defender with enormous appreciation of the ball and has never been made to kicks.
“I am a childhood friend of all the balls in this world,” he told the chronicler Armando Nogueira in 1962, who was nearby. For Armando, he “had the gift of velveting the ball almost always rough that surrounds a small area” and dared to “go ahead, with attacker galas”, committing “this sweet recklessness with the spontaneity of the ball geniuses.”
Left-to-naked on his governor’s island, Nilton Santos has acted in various positions. Destro, went to the 1950 World Cup as a reserve of Viril Augusto on the right side and never forgiven the coach – in his biography “My Ball, My Life” (1998), even said that Maracanazo did well to Brazil, because “with the defeat, a myth of a stage of Brazilian football fell together: Flávio Costa”.
Nilton finished his career as a tuck room, but it was even on the left side that he built his name. He did not forget the attack and broke a paradigm by becoming a side that dared to cross the midfield line.
The bid of Brazil’s second goal in the 3-0 win over Austria, in the 1958 World Cup. “I remember to this day,” said Zagallo, in 2013, at the time of Santos, at the age of 88, due to Alzheimer’s disease -aggravated pneumonia and heart failure.
“He started to attack, and I shouted, ‘Go ahead that I get in your place.’ Our coach [Vicente Feola] He despaired, but ended up applauding when Nilton surprised the entire opposing defense and scored the goal. From there, the sides never played the same way, “said Zagallo, left-wing on the first team of Brazil champion of the world.
This is one of the striking episodes, some more folkloric than others. There is training in which, humiliated by the skilled young man who was testing, Garrincha, advised Botafogo to hire him. There is the trickery of the 1962 World Cup, in the game against Spain, with a little step out of the area so that the judge of this foul, not a penalty, for the opponent.
There is also the game Botafogo x River Plate, in which Garrincha punished the defender Federico Vairo, with disconcerting dribbles. River’s Nestor Rossi centromedio, legend has he recommended his partner at the break, to touch Nilton’s legs: “Go there, walk, that the football of all the Beques in the world is there in those legs.”
It is hard to believe that dialogue unfolded in these terms, but Nilton Santos was the encyclopedia of football – the appropriate to which several parents emerged in conflicting versions, but was spread by radio broadcaster Waldir Amaral. And not even the “football of all the Bequis in the world” made him rich. Nilton used to sign blank contracts with Botafogo, accepting the amount the club was willing to pay.
“I have always been a professional with amateur spirit,” he said, with genuine simplicity, the carioca, capable of wearing the Corinthians shirt in support of friend Garrincha, who was trying his luck at Alvinegro of Parque São Jorge, already at the end of his career, in 1966. “It’s even an honor. Corinthians is the big and now my friend Mané.
It was also simply that it paraded in Vila Isabel in 2002, honored in the plot “The Glorious Nilton Santos – his ball, his life, our village”. Union goer, called the village tribute of the greatest emotion of his life.
The good-foot Nilton was also dear to the rivals and defended on the rare occasions when he lost his calm. When he was suspended by a slap given to Arbitrator Armando Marques in 1964, one of the voices that rose in his defense was that of Tricolor Nelson Rodrigues.
“It didn’t happen to anyone that a slap can have its deep ethics. Nilton Santos beat why? Yes, why?” Nelson wrote in his column in the newspaper O Globo, arguing that Armando “stuck his finger in his face.”
“Here’s the problem: – Can a player assault a player not retaliation?” The chronicler continued. “And, after all, the player who portrayed himself as a man – and for that reason – would have to be unpleasant, promoted, awarded. A player can never be anti -person.”
Nilton Santos has never been anti -person. And, in the centenary of his birth, revered by Botafoguenses and not Botafoguenses, Brazilians and non -Brazilian, displays the freshness of his salubérinum eternity.
