shirts bore patterns and collars you could wear only if you were the best in the world at something. Their Belgian goalkeeper wore a hat with a feather in it—and he was Belgian. They waved as they stepped off the bus to the local riffraff who had gathered to see if they were real—if it was possible that the Giganticos had really, really and truly, come to town from Montevideo perhaps, where they had just won a quarterfinal as a guest team in the South American championship, or from Cuba maybe, where they’d played at Castro’s behest with a waiver from the State Department, or from Hawaii even, where they’d played an exhibition against the Japanese national team and won by five goals.
They made a mockery of the American All-Star Soccer Association. They won games 12–1, 9–0, and 8–5 (having played the second half without a goalkeeper). Americans filled stadiums to see the Giganticos thrash their home teams, even though the locals couldn’t tell the difference between a corner kick or a goal kick or pronounce many of the players’ names, and even though they didn’t really know who any of them were. They knew they were good, they knew they were famous everywhere else in the world, but they didn’t know who any of them were. Not really.
Except for one: the Pearl of Brazil. They knew who he was, and they loved him. Everyone loved him. On planet Earth, in 1976, if you did not know—and love—the Pearl, your tribe had not yet been discovered.
He had met the pope and the Queen of England. He had met the Beatles and Elvis, and he had visited the White House. Other athletes, men seemingly twice his size—boxers, basketball players, home-run hitters—clamored to meet him and bask in his glow. He had toured Africa—not as a footballer, but as a harbinger of good, a layer on of hands.
He had once been rumored to be dead, and millions had poured into the streets all over the world, wailing with grief. His country plunged into the deepest misery, but he had not been dead—just misplaced in Ethiopia on a goodwill mission (his handlers had all been imprisoned indefinitely upon return to Brazil). He was not big or strong, but he had a mystical connection with the ball and a supernatural sense of the game that gave him full awareness of everything that was happening on the field at all times. He was almost never dispossessed and he made the most miraculous passes, threading the ball into spaces that seemed not to be spaces at all, easing the ball to his teammates’ feet with a mystical, gravity-defying lightness. And his goals! They were almost laughably acrobatic, wondrous creations that weren’t just magic, but magic tricks. His fans (everyone) wondered how he pulled them off. And he worked his magic everywhere he went: in four World Cups, on tours to every imaginable locale, and now in America. He was as charismatic as a great president and he was as humble as a child. No one rooted against him.
To the footballers of the world in 1976, he was a deity, a benevolent being sent by even more benevolent gods for the betterment of football, and therefore for the benefit of the planet. He was their king. Describing him this way did not seem ridiculous; it seemed like an understatement.
But in 1976, the Pearl of Brazil announced his retirement. The season of the American Bicentennial would be his last. He had come to America to share his version of the game with the unwashed masses, to act as ambassador for the Beautiful Game. He would win one more championship, leave the game better than he found it, and walk away. The summer of 1976 would be quite a summer for the Giganticos, and anyone who wanted any part of the world’s greatest footballer would have to get to him sometime that summer.
And a lot of people wanted to get to the Pearl of Brazil that summer.
Danny Hooper, of East Southwich Albion Association Football Club, of the English Third Division, was big and strong.
That’s what they’d told him since he was a boy, and that’s what people told him now. Over and over again they told him. “You’re a big, strong lad, Danny. It’s a blessing in this game, my boy. You’re big and you’re strong. We’ll need you to play like it.”
In the corner shop and at the chips stand by the Albion ground, they called him “big man.” “Well done at the weekend, big man,” they’d say, whether he’d done well or not. When he walked the gray and ancient streets of East Southwich, the old men nodded at him, the women smiled at him, and the kids just got out of his way. Today, on his way to the pub for a swifty with the only person he was talking to this week, the man in the coffee shop said, “Heyyyyyy, big man!” as he strolled by. Danny nodded, as big and strong men do.
In his youth, he’d enjoyed it—he was happy to have something that set him apart from the other boys. When you’re young, you’ll always get chosen for the team if you’re big and strong. No one will expect anything from you but muscle, even if you’d like to show them your finesse, a bit of subtlety—but at least you’ll always get picked. You’ll always have a place. The thing was, at twenty-two, Danny wasn’t so young anymore, and he was getting a little sick of being only and always the big, strong lad from gray and ancient East Southwich.
A few days before, at training, he had removed the ball from the foot of young Stevie Johnston, a flashy wisp of a young winger, and had kept possession as Johnston had caught back up to him to try to win it back. While Johnston made his hasty effort at the ball, Danny eased the soggy, leaden ball through poor Johnston’s Eiffel Tower–ed legs with the casual insouciance of a Dutch or Brazilian prodigy. It was the third time Danny had nutmegged someone, anyone, in his entire life, and only the fourth time he’d tried it. It filled him with joy. For a moment.
East Southwich Albion’s manager, a doughy and crusty World War II veteran named Aldershot Taylor, whose body had been infused through his feet with Third Division mud and through his face with third-division gin for decades, brought the session to an immediate halt.
“Danny, Danny, Danny,” moaned Aldy Taylor, whose voice came only in the bruised shades of Shatteringly Loud and British Forlorn. At the moment, he was surprising the squad with the British version. The blue-tracksuited and orange-bibbed members of East Southwich Albion stopped and looked at forlorn Aldy Taylor. “Danny,” Taylor said, “you’re paid by this football club”—he motioned with his stumpy arms at the mud and the men and the faded glory of East Southwich Albion Association Football Club—“to be big and strong. Money changes hands, my boy. You must... stop... that. Stop... whatever that was, my boy. Please.”*
The words hung gin-soaked in the dirty, damp English air while Taylor remembered why he’d said them, and then they hung waiting for the old man to free East Southwich Albion’s Royal Blues to continue their preparation for godforsaken Dire Vale United in the FA Cup Fifth Round Proper. They hardly even belonged in the Fourth Division, Dire Vale United. Just up from non-League football, Dire Vale United was promoted on a series of technicalities after finishing their customary twelfth. A lucky draw for East Southwich Albion, Dire Vale United. One of the few sides in all the world that could make East Southwich Albion feel they’d gotten a lucky draw. East Southwich Albion would surely be moving on in the world’s oldest cup competition, moving closer to that winner’s medal that Danny wanted so badly, so badly, at the expense of Dire Vale United Football Club.
Then Aldy Taylor said, “All right then. Continue, lads.”
If they don’t want expression, Danny thought, I won’t bloody give them any. If they want big and strong, they can have that. And nothing more. He determined that he would not speak until the FA Cup Fifth Round Proper match against Dire Vale United, and he did not.
Who on earth did Danny think he was? Where did he think he was? He could see it in their faces. Danny never imagined himself to have anything remotely Brazilian about his game, but he thought he measured up with a few of the Dutchmen. That didn’t seem too far a reach. They were big and strong too, some of them. Huge. And they played in mud, the Dutch. No one told them to shut down their imaginations, at least as far as Danny could tell.
Danny had once told his father he’d like to win a championship someday. As far as hopes and dreams went, that was about it for Danny. He couldn’t imagine a career