“I SMOKE, I DRINK AND I THINK!”
Andrew Downie’s biography of footballer Socrates is the fascinating story of a true legend
He was the most unlikely athlete ever. He smoked and drank, he hated running, training, and the gym. Erudite and informed on a wealth of subjects, he was in many ways an antithesis to those he shared a dressing room with. Socrates, captain of Brazil at the 1982 football World Cup in Spain, captain, therefore, of the greatest Brazil team to not have won a World Cup, was a player without precedent. “I smoke, I drink and I think,” is how he described himself. There had never been a player like him. There never would be one again. Andrew Downie’s new biography relies on an unpublished memoir Socrates himself wrote as well as exhaustive interviews of the player’s friends, peers, coaches and family. Downie, who has lived in Brazil for 17 years, and is Brazilian football correspondent for Reuters, pieces together the remarkable story of a man who was as pro Early on we find out how Socrates, with his inadequate muscle mass and unacceptable fitness levels, found a way to thrive: “I started to play one-touch football; as soon as I got it, I laid it off because I couldn’t stand the physical contact… Whatever I could use with just one touch I would use – whether it was my backside, my knee, my elbow and my back-heel, which ended up being my signature move. It was pure sensibility, survival.”
But Socrates was not merely a footballer. He was a qualified doctor who studied for his degree while beginning his career as a player. The arrangement with his early clubs was that he would not be involved in training, taking classes at the university instead, and would return only to play games on weekends. It was a unique arrangement, but one that clubs agreed to because of Socrates’s ability to influence matches. As his celebrity grew, and as he realised the weight his words had come to acquire, Socrates threw himself into politics like no other footballer ans, he led a revolutionary movement called Corinthian Democracy. It aimed at allowing players a huge say in every aspect of the running of the club. He also became a potent voice of the movement to free his country from military dictatorship. The heart of this book, though, is the 1982 World Cup in Spain in which, led by Socrates and made incandescent with the talent of Zico and Falcao, Brazil expected to emerge winners. Their play was mesmerising, and they won the public imagination. But needing only a draw with Italy to progress to the semi-final, Brazil lost 2-3 and went out of the World Cup. It was the biggest shock of the tournament, and one of the biggest in the history of the World Cup. It was testimony to the fact that in sport, the better team does not always win. Socrates later called it “the best game I had ever seen in my life”. Downie does not turn this book into a hagiography. While his admiration for Socrates is evident, he refuses to look away from the egotism, philandering, and opportunism that characterised the man. Here is Socrates’s teammate, protégé, and friend, Casagrande, describing his mentor. “[Socrates] didn’t think of anyone else but himself… He wasn’t a bad person. He was emotionally selfish; he harmed other people.” The book is at its best when Downie brings out the duality within the fraught complex genius