{"id":16853,"date":"2014-01-05T07:31:43","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T15:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=16853"},"modified":"2014-01-05T07:43:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T15:43:45","slug":"eusebio-portugals-footballing-hero-dies-at-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2014\/01\/05\/eusebio-portugals-footballing-hero-dies-at-71\/","title":{"rendered":"Eus\u00e9bio, Portugal’s footballing hero, dies at 71"},"content":{"rendered":"

theguardin.com – LISBON, Eus\u00e9bio, the outstanding figure of Portuguese football before the emergence of Cristiano Ronaldo, had died aged 71.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Portuguese sports daily A’Bola said Eus\u00e9bio had died of a cardiac arrest in the early hours of Sunday morning, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n

And a spokesman for Benfica told Press Association Sport: “We have just received confirmation of the death of Eusebio. It’s a very sad day for all of us.”<\/p>\n

He had been in poor health for some time and was hospitalised during Euro 2012 after suffering a heart scare in Poland.<\/p>\n

Benfica fans will now be offered the chance to pay their final respects to the player at the Estadio da Luz later on Sunday.<\/p>\n

“Eusebio’s body will be brought to the stadium later today and all fans will be able to say goodbye,” the spokesman said.<\/p>\n

Eus\u00e9bio, born in Mozambique, then a Portuguese colony, was the top scorer at the World Cup finals in 1966, where he led his country to the semi-final, which they lost 2-1 to England.<\/p>\n

Eus\u00e9bio won 64 caps for Portugal and the European Cup with Benfica in 1962, but was also feted as black Africa’s first international football star.<\/p>\n

In a Guardian interview before the first World Cup on African soil in 2010, he said he learnt to play with “socks or newspaper rolled into a ball”.<\/p>\n

He went on to score a phenomenal 727 goals in 715 games for his beloved Benfica and was Portugal’s leading scorer until surpassed by Ronaldo. He was named European footballer of the year in 1965.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

theguardin.com – LISBON, Eus\u00e9bio, the outstanding figure of Portuguese football before the emergence of Cristiano…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25049,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news"],"views":3523,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25049"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}