How Garrincha killed Heleno

The brief story of Heleno de Freitas: fame, fortune, fall, disease, and how it was Garrincha who did to him the one thing he was afraid the most: made people move on.

When Heleno de Freitas first entered a football field, the world had never seen anyone quite like him. Fast yet precise. Arrogant and good looking. Some say it was hard to know whether he was running or floating. Defenders throughout Brazil would fall victim to his curses in the years to come. Heleno was the captain and the field was his ship, everyone had to follow his orders and, should someone disobey, he would move the helm, the ship would turn and all those standing in his way would fall flat on the floor, seasick, as he made his way to the goal. Opponents and teammates alike, nobody was allowed in the captain’s booth.

When Heleno de Freitas left this world he had nothing. No money, no looks, not a friend nor a wife. Not even his sanity, at merely 39 years old. The booth was empty, the helm was loose.

But one thing he still had, something he valued above any friend, any woman, even above himself: the love of his people. That, he thought, he’d never lose.

He thought.

Heleno would rejoice in bringing the anger of his opponents onto himself. That made him hated by many, but also the most beloved player to the supporters of Botafogo, the team he defended in Rio de Janeiro. Problem is, Heleno at one point became such a prima donna that his own teammates couldn’t stand it anymore. Fellow Botafogo players would often call him “Gilda”, a reference to Rita Hayworth’s character in the movie of the same name. Sure enough, as the movie poster claims: “There never was a woman like Gilda” and there was never a player like Heleno de Freitas. He was the best, but he knew it very well, and for the first time ever a team manager faced the decision of either giving up his star, or sacrificing the loyalty of the entire squad. Botafogo chose the former as they sold Heleno to Boca Jrs, sparking an inevitable downfall.

He kept being the best. Heleno spent his days playing, occasionally visiting his homeland with the national team. At night, he would turn Buenos Aires upside down. The unruled lifestyle eventually led to the contraction of syphilis, the disease that would strip him from sanity and lead to his death.

The final years of his life were sad enough without what happened alongside the demise of his career. A new idol spawned in Botafogo, one that was able to match and surpass Heleno’s unmatchable and unsurpassable performances. They called him Garrincha. I think nobody explained it better than Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano:

“One of his many brothers baptized him Garrincha, the name of an ugly, useless little bird. When he started playing soccer, doctors made the sign of the cross. They predicted that this misshapen survivor of hunger and polio, dumb and lame, with the brain of an infant, a spinal column like an S and both legs bowed to the same side, would never be an athlete. There never was another right winger like him”

Over the final years of Heleno de Freitas’s life, he witnessed Garrincha bringing football to a new level, and doing it on the very same fields Heleno played merely a decade earlier. He could stand sickness, he could stand confinement, he could stand being abandoned by his former wife, who went on to marry his best friend. What he couldn’t stand was people forgetting. That, was too much.

Heleno became known as “the cursed prince”, the man who paved way to legends. As Helen of Troy, he was desired by the great kings of the world. And as Helen, a death sentence floated above his head. Victim of his own curse, fallen in his own ship, he sank.

This was how Garrincha’s magical skewed legs ended the life of the cursed prince, who died young and poor and forgotten in an asylum. He killed Heleno, but a legend never dies. As history writes itself, often times you can only read it after enough time has passed. Today, we see Heleno for what he was: bot a hero and a villain, his own nemesis and only comfort. The first of the best.

And no one else can ever be that again.

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