Eusébio

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"). Regarded among the finest footballers in history and Benfica's greatest ever player, he was famed for his pace, skill, physical power, and powerful right foot. His goal-scoring record was prolific: 733 goals in 745 matches. He made history as the first footballer to claim the European Golden Boot, the World Cup Golden Boot, and the UEFA Champions League Golden Boot. In the Champions League, his 47 goals place him second among all-time Portuguese scorers.

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 remains the all-time leading scorer with 473 goals in 440 competitive matches. His honours there include eleven Primeira Liga titles and one European Cup, and he was instrumental in reaching further European Cup finals in 1963, 1965, and 1968. In the pre-Champions League European Cup, his 47 goals rank second only to Alfredo Di Stéfano. He was the European Cup's top scorer in 1964–65, 1965–66, and 1967–68, and he won the Bola de Prata as Primeira Liga top scorer a record seven times. He was the inaugural winner of the 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 recognisable figures of his era until his death. He frequently appears in lists and polls ranking the greatest players ever. The IFFHS voted him the ninth-best footballer of the 20th century, and World Soccer magazine placed him tenth. Pelé included him in the 2004 FIFA 100 list of the 125 best living footballers. In the online UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll, he finished seventh. In November 2003, to mark UEFA's Jubilee, the Portuguese Football Federation selected him as Portugal's Golden Player—the nation's most outstanding footballer of the previous 50 years. After Eusébio's death, Di Stéfano declared, "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, Elisa 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 makeshift pitches, using stuffed socks as balls. One of those friends was José Manuel Alves Holbeche Bastos, whose father, José Rodrigues Holbeche Bastos, had played professionally for Sporting Clube de Lourenço Marques. Eusébio's father had played football in his youth and supported Lisbon's Benfica and its affiliate in Mozambique, Grupo Desportivo de Lourenço Marques.

He died of tetanus in 1950 when Eusébio was eight, leaving Elisa to raise him almost alone. Absorbed by football from an early age, Eusébio completed only the fourth grade (passing a final exam after already moving to mainland Portugal), the only one of his siblings without post-primary education; three of them became engineers.

Eusébio began playing 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 played under the names of those stars, using balls made from socks stuffed with newspaper.

He and some friends tried to join Desportivo de Lourenço Marques, his favourite team and a Benfica feeder club (where Mário Coluna had played before moving to Benfica), but were rejected without a chance to prove themselves. They were also rejected by Ferroviário de Lourenço Marques. At age 12, Eusébio tried Sporting Clube de Lourenço Marques (a branch of Sporting Lisbon), which accepted him and a group of his neighbourhood friends. There he had his first coached training sessions, received his first football equipment, and played organised football at both youth and senior levels.

At 15, according to Eusébio, a former Juventus goalkeeper turned scout spotted him: "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." He spent his first two seasons with Sporting Lourenço Marques' youth team, also 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 the senior team.

Eusébio arrived in Lisbon on 15 December 1960, at age 18, but only joined Benfica in May 1961, as a 19-year-old, after a transfer from Sporting Lourenço Marques for 400,000 Portuguese escudos (equivalent to €193,219 in today's currency).