Top 10 greatest individual performances in football
Football is a team game with a great emphasis on the collective. But even the best teams sometimes get stuck in a turgid stupor, even the greatest collective units needmoments of individual brilliance and this is when the champions step up, as theygrabthe match by the scruff of itsneck and wranglea result out of it. Heres a celebration ofsome of the greatest individual performances in the history of football, encompassing brilliant displays at the best club and national competitions (by no means is this list definitive, feel free to add your own favourite one-man hero performance in the comments)Note: Performances are in chronological order and not ranked
#1 Garrincha Brazil vs. England, World Cup QF, 1962
Pele is considered by many as the greatest who has ever played the game, but some old-timers say that he isn’t even the greatest Brazil has produced. And the reason for that argument, ludicrous as it sounds to us today, is Manuel Francisco dos Santos, or simply, Garrincha.
In the insanely rough 1962 World Cup (which saw the infamous Battle of Santiago between Italy and the hosts, Chile), Pele got injured in the second match against the USSR and was ruled out for the entire tournament . It didn’t matter much as a Selecao rode on the little bow-legged genius of Garrincha as he twisted and turned defenders inside out at will and rampaged through the tournament, scoring and creating goals at will.
His genius manifested itself on the ground in the most crowd pleasing manner possible - in a crucial match against Spain in the group stages, Garrincha raced down the right, beating one defender and then paused – when the defender he had beaten charged back to correct his mistake, he beat him again and then delivered a pin point cross for Amarildo to score the winner. That was classical Garrincha, supreme self-confidence fused with awes-inspiring skill helping him to make the ball talk while he toyed with defenders in a way only he could.
In truth, his performances through the entire tournament were incredible, but the best of all came against England in the quarterfinal. The man they called Algeria do Povo (People’s Joy) was at the height of his amazing footballing powers that afternoon, as he opened the scoring with a header off a corner and then smashed a shot which rebounded off the keeper and straight into the welcoming feet of the ever deadly Vava. Brazil’s third and Garrincha’s second was an absolute screamer, as he sent a curved ‘banana shot’ right into the bottom corner of the net. Garrincha was teaching the inventors of the beautiful game, just how well the game could be played.
The match ended 3-1, Garrincha would go on to score two more against Chile in the semifinal and would star as always in the victory over Czechoslovakia as Brazil marched onto their second (consecutive) world cup victory. Garrincha, the undoubted star of the tournament, was a World Champion once again.
The universal acclaim of the great man was typified by this headline in a Chilean newspaper – El Mercurio, which read - “What planet is Garrincha from?”