Socrates 1954-2011

Captain of Brazil's 1982 team, widely regarded as the greatest team never to win the World Cup, Socrates was a maverick of the highest order. He listed his heroes as Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and John Lennon rather than Pele, Garrincha or Jairzinho and started a democracy while playing at Corinthians, in opposition to the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil at the time, and it's treatment of professional athletes.

He graduated from Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto, the medical school of the University of Sao Paulo with a doctorate in medicine, remarkably while playing professionally at Botofogo. As a player he was known for his strength and skill, as well as popularising the back heel pass. After retiring, he practised medicine in Brazil, but remarkably, in 2004, at the age of 50, appeared as a substitute for Garforth Town in their match against Tadcaster Albion in the Northern Counties East Football League, the ninth level of English football. He had signed a one month player-coach deal.

Known as much for his beard and off field habits as his football, Socrates was a noted chain smoker and celebrated social drinker. Former Scotland international Willie Miller recalls being unable to urinate in the drug test room after the match at the 1982 World Cup in Seville. While he was taking on water in order to pass urine, Socrates, who had already submitted his sample, sat smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking bottles of beer. An accurate representation of a remarkable man.

Sadly, an intenstinal infection has taken him at just 57 years old. He leaves a wife and six children. RIP big man.