Brazil's Soccer Philosopher King

Sunday morning marked the passing of Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, better known simply as Socrates. The Brazilian midfielder was 57. He is survived by his wife and six sons. Sometimes greatness is measured through intangibles like leadership and personality, sometimes it is gauged through empirical achievement, like statistics and championships. Sometimes it's a combination of all those things. But Socrates stood on an even higher plane: Soccer will probably never again produce anyone like him.

European Pressphoto Agency

Brazilian midfielder Socrates, seen during the 1982 World Cup.

The 1982 Brazilian team that he captained was perhaps the greatest never to win the World Cup (along with Hungary in 1954 and Holland in 1974). It was also one of the last Brazil teams to fully embody the romantic stereotype that comes to mind when we think of the green-and-gold. Sublime touches, languid pace, creativity ... the sheer joy of what they call "jogo bonito," or the beautiful game. Zico was probably the best player on that Brazil side, but Socrates was its philosophy made flesh.

At 6-foot-4 and rail-thin, he strolled through the midfield sporting his trademark beard and headband. He could have been Bill Walton's long lost Brazilian cousin. On the ball though, he was more Magic Johnson, thanks to his signature move, the no-look backheel pass. It's one of those things that isn't particularly hard to do, but is frightfully difficult to do well, mainly because you have to weight and execute a pass to a point on the pitch you can't actually see. Plus, rather than kicking the ball with your foot, where you at least have some level of sensitivity, you strike it with the bony part of your heel. When you see it these days, it's often a hit-and-hope move of last resort. For Socrates it was his bread and butter, something he nonchalantly pulled off in congested midfields, surprising not just his opponents, but often his teammates too, who would suddenly receive assists in mid-stride.

The backheel is not something any youth coach teaches. Nor is it something any pro coach particularly wants to encourage, precisely because it is so unpredictable. But in the carefree world of 1970s Brazilian soccer it had its place, especially when used as effectively as Socrates used it.

His résumé is actually surprisingly bare. A few regional titles in Brazil, just one season in a major European league (with Italy's Fiorentina), 60 appearances and 22 goals for an outstanding Brazil team, albeit one that failed to win the World Cup. Yet that only tells part of the story.

Even as a professional, Socrates was a throwback to the amateur era, one where athletes were not defined solely by the sport they played. You want to talk student-athlete? For the first chunk of his career he was playing full-time for Botafogo while going to medical school at the University of Sao Paulo's campus in Ribeirao Preto. He didn't actually practice medicine until after his retirement, but when he tucked away this rocket against the Soviet Union in Brazil's opening match of the 1982 World Cup, he became the first (and probably last) M.D. to notch a goal on the game's biggest stage.

He was also an activist who, while at Corinthians in the late 1970s, founded a movement opposing the country's military regime. A self-described Maoist and pacifist, his heroes – unsurprisingly – were Che Guevara and John Lennon, making him an instant legend among the radical chic Euro-left. After retirement in 1989, he went back to university, eventually earning a Ph.D. in philosophy.

The talent and erudition, the political views and beard-and-bandanna look, all of it meshed with his avowed taste for tobacco and alcohol to make him a romantic outsized figure: part rebel, part intellectual, part Latin hunk, part superstar. You can't definitively rule out the possibility that one day someone may match or even surpass his achievements on and off the pitch, though it may take a long while for the next doctor/political activist/World Cup legend to roll on the scene. They may even do it with a beard, shaggy hair and a bandanna.

But what is certain is that nobody will do it with the style, panache and overall "cool" of Socrates. And they certainly won't be spraying no-look backheels all over the pitch when they do.

Gabriele Marcotti is the world soccer columnist for The Times of London and a regular broadcaster for the BBC. His column appears on Sundays.

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