by Percy Zvomuya, The Con
On the day that Mozambique-born football legend Eusébio set
forth for the other world, it’s likely a sieve-like dingy rowed from north
Africa sardine-packed with African immigrants headed for Europe.
The fate of thousands of African migrants who try to cross
the Mediterranean is varied but uniformly bleak. Some, never making it to
European shores, drown – up to 20 000 have died in the last two decades; others
end up in detention centres in Europe to be scrubbed with detergents to cleanse
“scum” off their black backs.
Plenty others live for months in Kafkaesque bureaucratic
voids –no longer in Africa but not quite in Europe. Considering all of this,
there is something moving and salutary
about the honour bestowed by the Portuguese government and the Portuguese people on Eusébio da Silva Ferreira during
his final moments on this earth.
A statue of the legend watches over Estadio da Luz,
Benfica’s home, a precinct that was turned into an instant shrine by mourners
and fans when he suddenly died on Sunday, January 5, aged 71. The Portuguese government declared
three days of national mourning for the man who, almost single-handedly,
did more for Portuguese football than anyone else (I am looking at you, José
Mourinho).
In a 1962 European Cup match against Real Madrid, the
institution from their Iberian rivals, Eusébio scored twice as Benfica defeated
the Spanish side 5-3. A few years later, at the World Cup in England in 1966,
he was the top scorer with nine goals when Portugal lost the semi-final match
to England, eventual winners of the tournament.
Eusébio, to be sure, was not the first player born in Africa
to play in Europe. Decades before he went to play for Benfica, Africans had
become a fixture in European leagues. Sean Jacobs of Africasacountry.com
pointed out in his tribute: “While it is
commonplace, today, for the football fortunes of European nations to depend
heavily on African players, it was Eusébio who blazed that trail.” France’s
1998 World Cup-winning team is the moment in the sun of the presence of the
darker men from the Antilles and Africa; France itself first fielded an African,
Raoul Diagne, in 1931.
Ajman_1968-09-15_stamp_-_Eusébio_da_Silva_Ferreira
In a sport dominated by west and north Africans, the fact
that one of the best players to grace the game is a Mozambican must be a source
of pride for southern Africans.
Mozambique, which has never qualified for the World Cup, has
appeared at the Africa Cup of Nations four times, in 1986, 1996, 1998 and, more
recently, 2010. They have always fared badly. In their maiden appearance at the
tournament, hosted by Egypt, they lost to 3-0 to Senegal, 2-0 to Cote d’Ivoire
and 2-0 to the Pharaohs.
Yet Portugal’s squad of 1966 had four Mozambicans: Portugal’s captain Mário Esteves Coluna, left
back Mário Esteves Coluna, central defender Vicente da Fonseca Lucas and, of
course, Eusébio. That’s a third – or
almost half if you consider that Eusébio was really two players – of the team
coming from Mozambique, then an overseas province of Portugal.
South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup was a source of
pride for the legend, who told journalist
Tim Vickery that “he could die happy after seeing the 2010
World Cup. He was so happy to see that the continent of his birth had been able
to stage the tournament which helped make his name.”
Doubt has been expressed about Eusébio’s loyalties to Mozambique and Africa (his
father was a white Portuguese railway worker and his mother was a black
Mozambican). I haven’t seen a more elegant theorization of this duality, quite
common in the Lusophone universe, as the one put forward by Angolan writer Pepetela
in the novel Mayombe.
In staccato snatches sprinkled throughout the book, a mixed
blood guerrilla fighting Portuguese imperialists in Angola contemplates his
mélange self.
“I was born in Gabela, in coffee country. From the land I
received the dark colour of coffee, from my mother’s side, mixed with the
off-white from my father, a Portuguese trader. I carry in me the irreconcilable
and that is my driving force. In a Universe of yes or no, white or black, I
represent the maybe. Maybe says no for someone who wants to hear yes and means
yes for someone who wants to hear no. Is it my fault if men insist on purity
and reject compounds? Am I the one who must turn me into a yes or a no? Or must
men accept the maybe? In the face of this essential problem, people are divided
in my view into two categories: Manicheans and the rest. It is worth explaining
that the rest are rare; the World is generally Manichean.”
It’s possible Eusébio
understood Pepetela’s assertion better than most. Until his death he
held dual nationality, and was a frequent visitor to Mozambique.
In 2010, he told Paul
Hayward, then working for the Guardian, that even though he is stable in
Portugal, he still had family and friends in his native homeland with whom he
is in contact. And then this: “Eighteen
years old, 17 December 1960. In December of this year I will have been 50 years
in Portugal.”
If he was fully assimilated into Portuguese society, as he
surely must have been, why does this date on which his rupture with his native
land occurred menace him so?
Eusébio carried the
nicknames “Black Pearl” and “Black Panther” – as politically freighted
as names can be – while refusing to
shoulder the monikers’ political burden (In this piece the writer argues that
Eusébio isn’t an African player). For instance, he wouldn’t comment on the war
of liberation going on in his home country.
Yet “the Mozambican people were proud of him and through sport he was
one of our ambassadors”, said former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano of
his countryman, who was involved in a number of charities.
Eusébio is, in many ways, a prototype of the player Europe
wants from Africa: quick and strong.
Glance at the tributes. Invariably they mention that he was
a “superb athlete” who could run 100m in 11 seconds and whose “powers of
acceleration” were astounding.
The Guardian obituary reads:
“He was the prototype of a complete 21st-century striker,
decades ahead of his time; a superb athlete (he ran the 100 metres in 11
seconds at the age of 16) with explosive acceleration who could leave defenders
trailing in his wake. He could also dribble, was good in the air and possessed
a fearsome and highly accurate right foot.”
Yet as anyone who has played street football will tell you,
if you possess speed and no guile, you won’t stand out.
Eusébio was noted for his outrageous improvisation on the streets, capable of all
manner of skills executed both in the air and on the ground. He played football
in the 1960s and 70s, the game’s golden era, a period before commerce and
sports science took over.
He played when the game boasted some of its all time greats,
players like Garrincha, George Best, Alfredo di Stefano, Johann Cruyff, Pele
and Ferenc Puskas.
What stood out about him in the company of these stars was
not his ability to run faster. He was, by all accounts, a prodigiously talented
player who scored at will. In a Fifa poll, he was voted the third best player
of the 20th century, after Pele and Diego Maradona. He scored 473 goals in 440
competitive games, a ratio of 1.075 goals per game. And, as Eusebio was quick
to tell Ronaldo when the latter surpassed his goals-record with the Portuguese
national team, that when he scored it wasn’t against the likes of Liechtenstein
or Azerbaijan.
Eusébio, you could say, is the decorated ancestor of Didier Drogba, Claude Makelele, Samuel Eto’o,
Patrick Vieira, all African-born players whose physical traits are celebrated
over their technique.
The problem was Eusébio arched over the template, both
national and physical. In fact, as Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galleano
triumphantly put it: “Portugal’s best player ever was an African from
Mozambique.”
