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Born in July 1892, two years before Charles Miller took football
to Brazil. Arthur was a mulatto (mixed race) with green eyes, African
hair and two magic feet. His father was a German business man his
mother a Brazilian laundry woman.
Growing up in Sao Paulo Friedenreich
must have witnessed at first hand the growth of football in Brazil.
We don't truly know how "Fried" found football but it
has been suggested his father had taken him as a child to watch
the German's play in kick abouts.
In 1909 now 17 Arthur joined Gêrmania-SP where quickly he
was recognized for his short and fast dribbles, creativity and a
strong kick, with both the feet.Given Germania's German background
this was a logical club for him given his fathers nationality.
However
after several club changes it was at Paulistano Club (no longer
a team) where he truly made an impact. Fried went on to be top scorer
in the São Paulo championship 9 times (a record only Pele
beat). It was unusual for "Fried" to fail to score in
any game he played and in these early days of football he was the
right man at the right time to make it into the first Brazilian
internationals and become Brazils first football superstar.
His
first international match (Brazil's first international SEE history
1914) was against Exeter City memorable because the Brazilian eleven
won and Fried lost two teeth as a result of a heavy tackle! His
exploits for Brazil led the Argentians and the Uruguaians to call
him, "El Tigre" (The Tiger) for his tenacity and his outstanding
goal scoring talents.
Later, in 1927, Paulistano arranged a European tour - the first
Brazilian club ever to do so. In Europe "Fried" won the
acclaim of the press and the fans in France, Switzerland and Portugal
and was, as expected, top goalscorer with 11 goals in 8 games.
Fried went on playing professionally until he was 43 years old
(another record), inevitably, he scored the winning goal in his
last game.. His final record stood at 1,329 goals in twenty six
years. However this figure is hotly disputed by various people
as
these goals cannot be confirmed (or denied) as the records no longer
exist.
This figure came from a journalist called Mário Viana.
Mário Viana's statistics were based on a notebook of notations
of all the goals and games of Friedenreich. However the contents
of this notebook was never seen by anyone else and soon disappeared.
The controversy continued when the journalist and researcher Alexander
Da Costa found a more probable tally of 592 games and 556 goals
(still a goals to games record). However many question these figures
as Da Costa simply estimated on some games (where the result was
recorded,
but
the
scorers name
was not known) how many goals Friedenreich actually scored. Many
times a list of the players and results was all he had to work
with.
We can safely say we will never know Friedenreich's final goal
tally but he still goes down in the record books as Brazil's first
superstar on the football pitch.
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