Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Friedenreich

In 1919 Brazil defeated Uruguay 1–0 and crowned itself champion of South America. People flooded the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Leading the celebration, raised aloft like a standard, was a muddy soccer boot with a little sign that proclaimed: “The glorious foot of Friedenreich.” The next day that shoe, which had scored the winning goal, ended up in the display window of a downtown jewelry shop.

Artur Friedenreich, son of a German immigrant and a black washerwoman, played in the first division for twenty-six years and never earned a cent. No one scored more goals than he in the history of soccer, not even that other great Brazilian artilleryman, Pelé, who remains professional soccer’s leading scorer. Friedenreich converted 1,329, Pelé 1,279.

This green-eyed mulatto founded the Brazilian style of play. He, or the devil who got into him through the soles of his feet, broke all the rules in the English manuals: to the solemn stadium of the whites Friedenreich brought the irreverence of brown boys who entertained themselves fighting over a rag ball in the slums. Thus was born a style open to fantasy, one which prefers pleasure to results. From Friedenreich onward, there have been no right angles in Brazilian soccer, just as there are none in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro or the buildings of Oscar Niemeyer.