One thing that a lot of people don't know about Portugal's Estado Novo regime under António de Oliveira Salazar is that unlike Franco and Mussolini in neighboring Spain and Italy, Salazar banned football in schools in 1932, and banned the professionalism of sport in 1943.

Interestingly, after his success in the 1966 World Cup, Eusébio, who played for Portugal due to Mozambique still being under colonial rule, received an offer from Juventus that would've made him the highest paid player in the world.

Salazar rejected it. https://twitter.com/ZachLowy/status/1244804204641779715?s=20

Considering him to be a national treasure, Salazar rejected Juve's offer and kept him in Lisbon.

"Salazar was not my father...what gave him the right?"

"The truth is he was my slave master, just as he was the slave master of the entire country."

With football out of the picture, physical education classes in Portugal centered more on gymnastics, incorporating different models from Germany and Sweden.

In 1932, Portugal banned Anglo-Saxon sports for their role in 'moral perversion and physical deformation.'

In September ‘65, it was reported that Benfica would play Spartak Moscow, the first game in Moscow in November 1965, the second being in Lisboa in May or October of 1966.

Within 24 hours, the anti-Soviet Estado Novo put an end to this, probibiting them from travelling to Moscow.

Benfica opened the Estádio da Luz in 1954; the largest stadium in Europe at the time. But it didn’t host a single Seleção match until ‘71.

The press blamed Portugal’s failure to qualify for the ‘70 World Cup on not being able to play in the Luz where they’d have the most fans.

João Malheiro argues, "To make Eusébio, a black African, the grandest symbol of the nation, perfectly served the perverse intentions of the Estado Novo.

[It] had the intention of protecting the regime, of softening its racial intolerance, of exhibiting an artificial generosity."

“Since its beginnings, the Estado Novo would contribute decisively to the dissemination of generalized racism, granting it a scientific character.”

Eusébio’s marriage to Flora Burheim, a white Portuguese woman, and military service helped mold his image. https://www.publico.pt/2013/08/21/jornal/o-lugar-de-eusebio-26976973

Eusébio was playing for Sporting de Lourenço Marques, Sporting’s feeder club. Benfica were set to pay him a contract to take him to Portugal, offering €1,000 for three years.

Sporting, on the other hand, more or less offered an unpaid field trip.

In order to prevent Sporting from kidnapping Eusébio, Benfica brought him to Lisbon and then sent him to the Algarve. After five months of controversial negotiations, it was agreed that Eusébio would play for Benfica.

The transfer was known as ‘Operation Ruth Malosso.’

Portugal’s ‘Indigenato’ system legally considered Africans in Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde to be culturally uncivilized and thus second-class citizens.

It ran from 1926 to 1960. Eusébio joined Benfica in 1961.

As a product of this system, Portugal judged Africans who had ‘reached a level of civilization’ that qualified them for full rights as Portuguese citizens as ‘Assimilados.’

Through his military service and marriage to a Portuguese white woman, Eusébio culturally ‘assimilated.’

It’s been seven years since Eusébio “O Rei” da Silva Ferreira passed away at 71.

Apart from being one of the greatest footballers to ever step on a pitch, his legacy was so monumental that the Estado Novo attempted to manipulate his popularity by creating PR for their regime.