January 24 – The Black Diamond Passes Away

THE trailblazing Brazilian legend Leonidas da Silva, top scorer in the 1938 World Cup and possible inventor of the bicycle kick died to today in 2004, aged 90.

Leonidas was one of Brazilian football’s first superstars and could boast of two classic nicknames: the ‘Black Diamond’ and the ‘Rubber Man’. After beginning his career playing for a number of minor sides in Rio de Janeiro Leonidas joined Penarol of Uruguay in 1933, spending a year at the club before moving back to Brazil to play for Vasco da Gama.

Here he would win the Brazilian Championship and leave after one season to go to Botafogo, where he would again spend one season and again win the title. In 1935 he became one of the first players to sign for the elitist club Flamengo and that is when nickname number one was born.

Leonidas would make his mark on the world stage in the 1938 World Cup, where seven goals saw him top the goalscoring charts as Brazil lost to Italy in the semi-final. Brazilian manager Ademar Pimenta made possibly one of the biggest gaffs in World Cup history by resting the striker against the Italians, meaning that the Brazilians were without the man that “was our stick of dynamite” according to a Brazilian hack at the time.

When he returned home Leonidas found himself the most famous man in the country and became the first footballer to commercially endorse a product, as the chocolate manufacturer Lacta launched the Diamante Negro, a chocolate bar that is still produced to this day in ten countries around the world.

By this time he had already acquired his other nickname, as his elasticity on the pitch saw him dubbed the ‘Rubber Man’, a quality he used to help nurture the development of the bicycle kick, although many credit Chile’s Ramon Unzaga as the first man to perform the showboating trick. Bizarrely, Doug Ellis (yes, that one) also claims to have invented it in his autobiography despite never being a professional footballer.

Leonidas finished his career with a spell at Sao Paulo and could look back on a record with the Selecao that saw him make 19 appearances and score 21 goals. Tragically he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease from 1974 until it killed him in 2004, but his place in Brazilian folklore is secure. As playwright Nelson Rodrigues said of him: “He was a rigorously Brazilian player. Had the fantasy, childhoodness, improvisation and the sensuality from the best Brazilian players.”

Read about one of Leonidas’ countrymen that was making waves today here and see some cracking grainy old film of Brazil taking on Poland in the 1938 World Cup, where the Black Diamond bagged a hat-trick in a 6-5 thriller. They don’t make them like they used to….