Why winning was not everything for true VIP Socrates

EVEN after Dino Zoff had lifted the trophy into the Madrid sky, it was still Socrates, Zico and Eder and not Rossi, Conte and Tardelli that we wanted to be in the back garden that magical summer of 1982.

All of us of a certain generation who played in the garden parks that summer got a little sentimental and nostalgic, and a little bit older too, last Sunday evening with the news that Socrates, the wonderfully graceful captain and fulcrum of that extraordinary Brazilian team, had passed away at the age of 57.

I would have been 10 that summer. By then I’d been watching Match of the Day religiously for nearly four years, ever since the previous World Cup, really. It was no way to prepare you for the spectacle and novelty that was Brazil in 1982.

In those few months leading up to España ‘82 you were given some taste of what was to come, as the various World Cup special magazines we ate up raved about the flair and feats of Zico & Co. But to then actually see them in their opening match against the USSR, and Socrates’ rocket of an equaliser, followed by Eder’s winning volley, was simply jaw-dropping.

Looking back, it’s no wonder that team didn’t win the World Cup. They were desperately lax at the back, while for all their incredible attacking prowess, their worst player wasn’t a defender but their one out-and-out striker, Serginho, who looked and played a lot like Emile Heskey.

Sitting that day in our front room and watching them lose 3-2 to Rossi and the Italians, it didn’t just feel like the end of their World Cup but the end of the world.

A few years ago the English sportswriter Andy Mitten tracked Socrates down in Brazil to reflect on that summer. “Our loss to Italy was like achieving the conquest of the most beautiful woman in the world,” said Socrates, “but then being unable to do what matters with her. But it can happen, in life and in sport. People remember our team because we lost, not won. Nobody tried to copy Italy.

“To win is not the most important thing. Football is an art. If Vincent van Gogh and Edgar Degas had known when they were doing their work the level of recognition they were going to have, they would not have done them the same.”

A few days ago in this paper Larry Ryan rightly pointed out that for too long, Spurs revelled in the fact they played the glory game instead of winning football. Even Socrates regretted not getting to close the deal with the most beautiful woman in the world. But as he said, it can happen, and he could always say he at least got to dance with her, and in the process make people dance with them.

Keegan’s Newcastle blew that title race in ‘96 but didn’t we just love them so much in comparison to Kenny Dalglish’s Blackburn team that won it the year before?

Last year ESPN broadcast a documentary, The Fab Five, recalling the story of a quintet of outrageously talented freshmen basketballers who in the early 1990s took the University of Michigan to the NCAA tournament final two years in a row.

Along the way, Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Ray Jackson, Jimmy King and Juwan Howard revolutionised college basketball with their baggy shorts, black socks, shaved heads and eye-popping above-the-rim game. Up to then, hip-hop culture and street ball had been kept strictly to the streets but the Fab Five brought into the living rooms and the arenas of America where it now will never leave the building.

The Fab Five didn’t win either of those two championship games. Yet almost 20 years later all five were asked if they’d swap being a member of the Fab Five for winning a championship and not one of them would.

“There are two games,” said Rose. “There’s the score of the game and there’s the game of life. Did we want to win two championships? Yes. But we didn’t. But tell me what was the starting lineup for the [North] Carolina team that beat us in the final? Right after the game we all went to the same place at the same time and let’s just say they were waiting in line and couldn’t get in. We were VIP.”

The Waterford hurlers will always carry a regret they didn’t go all the way under Justin McCarthy, but they can take a certain pride too. He once said he didn’t want to manage “any old team” and they certainly weren’t. If the Tipperary team that won the 2001 All-Ireland walked into a nightclub outside their county, would anyone have known them? Would they have even got in? Dan and Mullane would.

I didn’t know until the weekend that Rai, who started the 1994 World Cup as Brazilian captain until he was replaced by Dunga, was Socrates’ brother. To be honest, we’d forgotten all abut him. Rai might have got to make love to the most beautiful woman in the world but unlike his brother and Ken McGrath, he wasn’t VIP.