I forgot the cheese pastries…

I was interviewed this week by Fernando Martinho, from the “Nosso Futebol” TV Channel. It was a long and pleasant conversation, at the end of which he asked me to line up my “best eleven ever”.

So, he wanted the names of the players I had seen along my career as a journalist, stretching an already considerable distance. I went: Lev Yashin, Carlos Alberto Torres, Franco Baresi, Franz Beckenbauer, Nílton Santos; Gérson de Oliveira Nunes, Bobby Charlton, Diego Maradona; Garrincha, Pelé, Rivellino.

It was then that I remembered a famous occasion in the “Os Maias” fiction, by Eça de Queiroz. It happened on a trip to Sintra. One of the participants, Cruges, had been charged by his mother with the special duty of bringing back to her, in Lisbon, the famous cheese pastries of the region.

All day long, Cruges kept pleading with his friends: “Don’t let me forget the cheese pastries””…

They went to several places, had a good time. At the end of the day, deep from the back of the carriage that transported them back to Lisbon, a horrendous shout is heard:

“I forgot the cheese cakes!”

I write this because, when the recording was over, a thought suddenly crossed my mind: “And Lionel Messi?”

It was like Cruges forgetting the cheese pastries. The only (bad, I realize) excuse I can offer is this: the question was about “the best players of all time…excluding the ones still in action”.