Eusebio

Eusébio da Silva Ferreira (25 January 1942 – 5 January 2014) was a Portuguese striker known by the nicknames "Black Panther," "Black Pearl," and "o Rei" ("the King"). Widely regarded as one of football's all-time greats and Benfica's finest ever player, he was famed for his speed, technique, athleticism, and powerful right foot. His goal-scoring record was extraordinary: 733 goals in 745 matches. He was the first player to win the European Golden Boot, the World Cup Golden Boot, and the UEFA Champions League Golden Boot.

In the UEFA Champions League, he ranks second among Portuguese all-time top scorers with 47 goals. At the 1966 FIFA World Cup, Eusébio led Portugal to a third-place finish and was the tournament's top scorer with nine goals. He won the Ballon d'Or in 1965 and finished runner-up in 1962 and 1966. For Benfica, he is the all-time top scorer with 473 goals in 440 competitive matches, helping the club win eleven Primeira Liga titles and one European Cup, while also reaching European Cup finals in 1963, 1965, and 1968.

In the pre-Champions League era of the European Cup, he is the second-highest scorer behind Alfredo Di Stéfano, with 47 goals. He was the European Cup top scorer in 1964–65, 1965–66, and 1967–68, and won the Bola de Prata for Primeira Liga top scorer a record seven times. He claimed the first-ever European Golden Boot in 1968 and repeated the feat in 1973. After retiring, Eusébio served as a football ambassador and remained one of the most recognizable figures of his generation.

He frequently appears in lists and polls of the greatest players. The IFFHS ranked him the ninth-best footballer of the 20th century, while World Soccer magazine placed him tenth. Pelé included him in the 2004 FIFA 100 list of the 125 best living footballers. He finished seventh in the online UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll.

In November 2003, to mark UEFA's Jubilee, the Portuguese Football Federation named him the Golden Player of Portugal, recognizing him as the country's most outstanding player of the previous 50 years. After Eusébio's death, Di Stéfano said, "For me Eusébio will always be the best player of all time." Eusébio was born on 25 January 1942 in the Mafalala neighbourhood of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), Portuguese Mozambique. His father, Laurindo António da Silva Ferreira, was a white railroad worker from Malanje, Portuguese Angola; his mother, Elisa Anissabeni, was a black Mozambican woman.

He was the fourth of five children (Jaime, Alberto, Adelino, Eusébio, and Lucília). After his father's death from tetanus in 1950, when Eusébio was eight, his mother raised him largely alone. She later had three more children from a second marriage (Gilberto, Inocência, and Fernando). Growing up in extreme poverty, Eusébio often skipped school to play barefoot football with friends on improvised pitches, using stuffed socks as balls.

One of those friends was José Manuel Alves Holbeche Bastos, whose father had played professionally for Sporting Clube de Lourenço Marques. Eusébio's father had also played football in his youth and supported Benfica and its affiliate team in Mozambique, Grupo Desportivo de Lourenço Marques. Eusébio completed only the 4th grade (passing a final exam after arriving in mainland Portugal), making him the only sibling without post-primary education; three of his siblings became engineers.

Eusébio first played for a local amateur team he and his friends formed, called Os Brasileiros (The Brazilians), in honour of the great Brazil national team of the 1950s. They used the names of those Brazilian stars and played with balls made of socks stuffed with newspapers. Eusébio tried to join Desportivo de Lourenço de Marques, his favourite team and a Benfica feeder club (where Mário Coluna had played before moving to Benfica), but was rejected without a chance to prove himself.

He was also turned down by Ferroviário de Lourenço Marques. At age 12, he tried Sporting Clube de Lourenço Marques (a branch of Sporting Lisbon), which accepted him and a group of his friends. There he had his first coached training sessions, received his first football equipment, and played organized football at youth and senior levels. At 15, according to Eusébio, a former Juventus goalkeeper turned scout spotted him and recommended him to Juventus, but his mother refused the offer.

He spent his first two seasons with the youth team, making a few senior appearances, before being promoted to the main squad. In his last season with the club (1960), he won the Campeonato Provincial de Moçambique and the Campeonato Distrital de Lourenço Marques. From 1957 to 1960, he scored 77 goals in 42 appearances for Sporting Lourenço Marques' main team. On 15 December 1960, Eusébio arrived in Lisbon at age 18.

He officially joined Benfica in May 1961, as a 19-year-old, after a transfer from Sporting Lourenço Marques for 400,000 Portuguese escudos.