Top facts about Garrincha, The King of Dribble

Manuel Francisco dos Santos (October 28, 1933 – January 20, 1983), better known as Mané Garrincha, was a Brazilian professional footballer who played as a right-winger. He is widely recognized as one of the best players of all time, and others consider him to be the best dribbler of all time.

In Brazil, Garrincha is much loved, with many older fans believing he is better than Pele. Garrincha was a key figure in Brazil's World Cup triumphs in 1958 and 1962. When Pelé was injured in the 1962 World Cup, Garrincha guided

to victory with a dominant performance throughout the tournament.

He also made history by being the first player to win the Golden Ball (Player of the Competition), Golden Boot (Leading Goalscorer), and World Cup all in the same tournament. In addition, he was chosen to the World Cup All-Star Teams in both the 1958 and 1962 World Cups.

He was chosen to the FIFA World Cup All-Time Team in 1994. While Garrincha and

were on the pitch, Brazil never lost a match.

Garrincha spent most of his professional career at Botafogo. The home team room at Maracana Stadium is known as "Garrincha." The Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha is named after him in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia. He is credited with inventing the first olé bullfighting cries, which were utilized in football stadiums.

Let’s get to the details of the

top facts about Garrincha

.

The rarest top facts about Garrincha, The King of Dribble

In the FIFA Player of the Century grand jury poll in 1999, he placed in eighth place. He was inducted into the Brazilian Football Hall of Fame and was a member of the World Team of the 20th Century. He was also known as Alegria do Povo (People's Joy) and Anjo de Pernas Tortas due to his enormous popularity in Brazil (Bent-Legged Angel).

We gave you a little insight into how great he was, well, you will find out his greatness on your own after reading this article of

top facts about Garrincha

.

Garrincha information

In this portion of the top facts about Garrincha, we'll look at some of his most basic information for people who may not be familiar with him or have just seen him on a few occasions in various shows or on the field but want to learn more.

Personal information

• Full name:

  Manuel Francisco dos Santos

• Date of birth:

  28 October 1933

• Aged:

  49 years

• Star Sign:

  Scorpio

• Star sign features:

  Resourceful, brave, passionate, stubborn

• Nationality:

  Brazilian

• Place of birth:

  Magé, RJ, Brazil

• Marital status:

  Married

• Religion:

  Christianity

Football information

• Position:

  Winger

• Total appearances:

  395

• Club appearances:

  345

• National appearances:

  50 caps

• Total goals:

  257 goals

• Foot:

  Right

Physical stats and appearance

• Height:

  1.69 m

• Weight:

  72 kg

• Hair color:

  Black

• Skin color:

  Black

• Facial hair:

  Clean

Now that we've covered everything there is to know about Garrincha for those who aren't familiar with him, it's time to move on to the next section, which includes some intriguing top facts about Garrincha.

Garrincha Transfermarkt

That 2 times world cup championship shines bright as soon as you enter his profile page on

.

It's such a hard task to accomplish because not only the world cup competition is the place of the greatest players but also it happens every 4 years which means it is hard for the player to maintain his physical fitness to get chosen for another world cup and yet win it.

Too bad that there are no records available of his transfer value or the transfer fees, so we could’ve been able to compare his market value to the actual fee, but it is quite understandable since he was a player way before websites like Transfermarkt were available.

Now, let’s get to his career, and then we can get through his personal stuff next up in

top facts about Garrincha

.

Garrincha club career

When Garrincha signed for Botafogo in 1953, he was already married and a father. Officials on the team were overjoyed to find that he was beyond the age of 18 and qualified to be treated as a professional.

He showed off his incredible abilities in his first training session by dribbling the ball past the legs of Nlton Santos, a Brazilian international defender and defensive midfielder with 16 caps.

Santos was so taken with the youthful Garrincha that he insisted on having him signed by

. On July 19, 1953, he made his first-team debut against Bonsucesso, scoring a hat trick in a 5–0 triumph for Botafogo's reserves.

He was sold to Corinthians in 1966, while his career was waning. He joined the Colombian club, Atlético Junior, two years later. He returned to Brazil the next year and joined Flamengo, where he remained until 1969. Garrincha, 38, was said to be joining French team Red Star FC 93 in 1971, but he never signed and returned to Brazil.

Garrincha's professional football career ended in 1972, when he joined Olaria, though he continued to play in exhibition matches until 1982.

Garrincha was the target of multiple transfer efforts by wealthy European teams, including Juventus of Turin, Italy, in 1954. After some outstanding performances on a European tour in 1959, Real Madrid attempted to recruit him.

In 1963, Internazionale,

, and Juventus of Italy pondered teaming up to recruit him (he would have to spend a season with each). It would have been a one-of-a-kind agreement in football.

Garrincha net worth and salary

Even though there are no records of his actual or even estimated net worth, you can easily find evidence of him being rich as he was getting paid thousands and we will eventually come across some of the events which made Garrincha super-rich but he was not acting like he had any kind of fortune.

Unfortunately, we had no information about his net worth but what we do have is his early life details and the details of his last days. So, let us proceed to the next section of top facts about Garrincha.

Garrincha childhood

This part of the top facts about Garrincha starts from when Garrincha was born and it happened in 1933 in Pau Grande, a Magé neighborhood in the state of Rio de Janeiro. He was born with his right leg 6 cm shorter than his left, as well as his left leg bent outwards and his right leg bent inwards, making him disabled as a toddler, according to one doctor.

Garrincha's father was an alcoholic who drank a lot of cachaça, a problem he would inherit.  A carefree young man, he was smaller than other children his age, and when his sister Rosa noticed he was as small as a small bird, she began calling him Garrincha, the northern name for the wren, a small brown bird. 

The name stuck, and he was known as Garrincha to his family and friends by the age of four.  Garrincha's friends referred to him as Mané (short for Manuel). In Brazil, the coupled Mané Garrincha is quite popular among fans.

Despite his remarkable potential, Garrincha remained unknown to football scouts and did not enter professional football until his late teens. He had no desire in pursuing a professional career.

Jimmy dos Santos, Garrincha's younger brother, played 20 games for Série A side

in 1959.

These days were all fun and stuff but his last days were bitter. So bitter that he tried to take his own life but didn’t succeed. Let us move on to the next section where we have explained it all.

Garrincha death

On the football field, Garrincha's success was in sharp contrast to his personal life. He drank excessively throughout his entire life and was involved in numerous catastrophic traffic accidents, including a collision with a lorry that killed his mother-in-law in April 1969.

Garrincha died of cirrhosis of the liver in an alcoholic coma on January 20, 1983, in Rio de Janeiro, after a series of financial and marital issues. He had been hospitalized eight times in the preceding year and was a physical and mental disaster at the time of his death.

His later years were unpleasant and obscure - he seemed to have faded into obscurity – but his burial procession, which stretched from the Maracana to Pau Grande, gathered millions of fans, friends, and former teammates.

"Here lays in peace the one who was the People's Joy — Mané Garrincha," his gravestone says. People had written on the wall: Thank you, Garrincha, for living.

Estádio Mané Garrincha, a multi-purpose stadium in Brasilia, is named after him. His career was dramatized in the 1962 film Garrincha, Alegria do Povo, and his life on and off the field as shown in the 2003 film Garrincha - Estrela Solitária ("Lonely Star"), based on Ruy Castro's book.

This was the saddest part of the top facts about Garrincha article, but to change the mood, we are going to explain why he was named Garrincha.

Garrincha nickname

He was known as 'O Anjo de Pernas Tortas,' 'The Angel With Bent Legs,' and 'Alegria do Povo,' or 'The People's Joy.' The youngster would be known simply as Garrincha to the rest of the world. Between swimming in rivers and kicking improvised footballs, the angel with bent legs, who was called after a sad and wretched little bird, used to hunt down and kill these animals known as Garrinchas.

The act's symbolism and irony are just too potent.

We went back to his childhood again so let us come a bit further and take a closer look at his family and children.

Garrincha family

Now, this is where the most interesting facts about Garrincha are stored. He married twice, the first to Nair Marques, a factory worker from Pau Grande with whom he had eight children in 1952 (they divorced in 1965), and the second to Elza Soares, a samba singer whom he married in a ceremony in March 1966.

A gorgeous Brazilian singer called Elza Soares stepped in and hugged Garrincha in the shower as the nude players rejoiced in the dressing room, kicking off a tempestuous romance that lasted more than 15 years.

Garrincha's wife and expanding family were back in Pau Grande while the pair resided in Rio. Many Brazilians turned against him as a result, and the rot set in over the next few years.

Soares had already married, and the marriage resulted in Garrincha being depicted as a villain by the same press that had previously praised him.

Soares left him after he punched her after an argument in 1977, and the pair split up. Garrincha had a number of other notable relationships, including one with showgirl Angelita Martinez, and he is said to have fathered at least 14 children.

Garrincha controversies

Now, here’s where top facts about Garrincha get weird.

Garrincha's womanizing and drunkenness grew more noticeable after the World Cup. He was dismissed from the Brazilian team, and while on a Botafogo tour of Sweden in May 1959, he fathered a son with a local female.

He also forfeited a large portion of his £2,500 Brazilian cruzeiro World Cup money. He donated 200,000 cruzeiros (£625) to the plant in Pau Grande, but stored most of the remainder beneath his mattress - "I don't believe in banks," he later stated - only to find it rotted after years of bed-wetting.

Even as his injuries began to take their toll, Botafogo insisted on playing him. Cachaca, a sugarcane liquor, became a regular part of his diet. As he failed to get lucrative terms, his financial problems worsened.

In the while, Garrincha's personal obligations as a parent grew, with his wife giving birth to their fifth daughter and his mistress giving birth to another kid. In Rio, they would chant, "Hey Garrincha!" "On the football field, you may deceive them, but you can't deceive that stork!"

His and Elza's neighbors in Rio's upscale Urca neighborhood tormented them. When they went to Pau Grande, they were assaulted. After a vigilante squad visited their home after a military dictatorship took over Brazil, the couple escaped to Rome.

Mane Garrincha passed away 36 years ago and was buried at the Raiz de Serra cemetery, but his body has since gone. According to the Daily Mail, the mayor of Mage, where the legend was buried, has sworn to discover his bones.

When mayor Rafael Tubarao sought to pay honor to the athlete on what would have been his 84th birthday, he realized his remains had vanished. While attempting to determine where he was buried, it was revealed that no one knew where he was buried.

It is certainly heartbreaking to see such a talent go to waste and die at such a young age, but it is somehow relieving to realize that the world still remembers him as one of the greatest players that have ever played.

Thank you for taking the time to read the top facts about Garrincha; we would welcome it if you could share this post with your friends and family so that they may learn more about Sir Tom Finney and the incredible things he has accomplished.

Read more

Follow 

 for the