The South American player of the year. Essentially, the voting was battle between Zico and Maradona for some time – this year Maradona (Barcelona, Spain) was voted 3rd, Falcao (Roma, Italy) – 2nd, and Zico number 1.
Introducing Zico would be ridiculous by now, so instead of words a few pictures (not all from 1982) will suffice:
The sacred number 10 not yet given to him – Rivelino had it at the time of the photo.
A failed free kick, but still spectacular.
Celebrating a goal with Socrates – what a pair!
The ‘White Pele’ posing after scoring 500 goals – half of record of the greatest one.
Zico won its 3rd continental award this year, thus emerging ahead of Maradona, who had been number one twice at the moment, and equalizing the record of Elias Figueroa. Two factors played a role: Brazil was very impressive at the World Cup – and Argentina was not – and Flamengo won the Brazilian championship. Meanwhile, Maradona struggled both with the national team of Argentina and with his new club Barcelona. Zico was greater than Maradona, as it appeared, but, unfortunately, he was much older than his rival and given the fact he was present since 1971 in professional football and nicknamed after Pele for years, success came a bit late – the star was aging. This turned out to be his last number one award. As for the award itself, it was still run by its founder – it may be strange, since South America had such famous publications as El Grafico (Argentina) and Placar (Brazil), but the Venezuelan newspaper El Mundo (Caracas) was behind the award and there will be quite a few years before the Uruguayan El Pais (Montevideo) took over. And there was a bit of controversy: today the ranking above is the established truth, but back in real time not so – the Soviet weekly Football-Hockey reported in its first issue for 1983 something different: Zico – 1st with 301 points, Maradona – 2nd with 296, Fernando Morena – 3rd, Socrates – 4th, and Passarella -5th. No Falcao at all. May be another unofficial voting? Who knows.