BBC HomeExplore the BBC
This page was last updated in February 2009We've left it here for reference.More information

9 December 2009
Accessibility help
Text only
Storyville BBC Four

BBC Homepage
BBC Television
Get BBC Four
FAQ

Contact Us

Like this page?
Send it to a friend!

 
Garrincha
  GODS OF BRAZIL
Jean-Christophe Rosé, France, 2002
Click here for broadcast times
 
 

Pele and Garrincha are both footballing legends in Brazil. Using archive footage, Gods of Brazil tells the story of these two men and explains how one became the World's Greatest Footballer and the other died a broken alcoholic at the age of 49.

 
 
ALEX BELLOS
Interview
Brazilian football author on Pele and Garrincha
  Alex Bellos
AJAX
Behind the scenes with the Dutch football giants
Ajax

 

 FOOTBALL ON FOUR
Season of documentaries and films broadcast in 2003

 STORYVILLE HOMEPAGE

 STORYVILLE NEWSLETTER

BBC links

Audio Interview: Pele
Hear BBC audio extracts from 1971 and 1986

BBC Sport Forum: Pele
Pele answers your questions, with audio

Correspondent: The Boys from Brazil
Background and clips on the Brazilian football crisis

  Nick Fraser

Commissioner's Comment
Nick Fraser
Storyville Series Editor

 
 

Who was the greatest footballer of all time? Most money will be placed on Pele, but this film offers an alternative. It suggests that the crown should go to Garrincha (it means "little sparrow"), a diminutive, near-disabled adolescent from northern Brazil who preceded Pele by a few years and built the Brazilan team's international success with him.

But this film is a treat because it's made with an astonishing eye. The French director Jean-Christophe Rosé has made a series of films about sport, becoming something of a connoissuer in relation to the use of archive.

You can wonder at the goals scored, I watched the film again and again. But you will also come away with a greater knowledge of just how it was that football was completely reinvented in the early 60s by Pele and Garrincha.

 Storyville Homepage

 


About the BBC | Help | Terms of Use | Privacy & Cookies Policy