Eusébio

Eusébio arrived in Lisbon from Mozambique in 1960, aged 18, smuggled out of a country that did not want to let him go — Benfica's scouts famously won a card game for his signature. Within a year he was scoring twice in a European Cup final. In 1965 he took the Ballon d'Or, and in 1966 he lit up the World Cup in England with nine goals, four of them in one astonishing comeback against North Korea at Goodison Park, and left the tournament in tears on the Wembley turf.

The numbers still stop conversation: 473 goals in 440 games for Benfica, seven European Golden Boots' worth of scoring, 633 goals in total for the club. Benfica retired the number ten; Portugal half-mourned the country to a standstill when he died in 2014. In a sport that keeps meticulous records, he remains one of the few whose statistics are routinely re-checked — not for doubt, but for delight.