Zico was a name I could not put a face to; I knew it was a he, and I knew he played for Brazil. If pressed I would have said maybe he was in the same team as Garrincha, one hundred and fifty years ago, when highlights were grainy grey and white.
To my surprise he was playing merely one hundred years ago, in the eighties. And in colour! After watching one minute of a highlights package I instantly knew he was my type of player. When he dribbled he had a near identical method of moving as Maradona, waiting till the last second to spirit the ball past the uselessly fooled limb of an opponent. His weight distribution mirrored El Diego too, it was uncanny.
He had the nutmeg capability of Riquelme at his best, doling out embarrassment left, right and centre.
Sometimes you can watch players from different eras and make a judgement on whether they could cut it in the modern game. Maybe you see an element of their physicality that would limit them in a particular style of play. With Zico, he looks like he would have slipped into a fantabulous Guardiola passing contraption with ease.
You can watch a 30 second time-lapse of this artwork being created here.