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Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira a.k.a. Socrates
In the first place we would like to do an homage for the former Brazilian player Socrates.
Nicknamed after the Greek philosopher, Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira left this world in 2011.
The international Brazilian player is the only player in the world who finished medical school while playing soccer and also was one of the few who practiced it after leaving the football world.
He is the perfect combination of that era where soccer was not so important, but it was on its way to becoming a phenomena.
The Socrates doctor, was also involved in the political world, helping the people with his knowledge and his new formed party named the Corinthians Democracy.
Fighting with his mind against the military regime and supporting democracy, easily Socrates became a philosopher and his political movement started to grow.
All of his knowledge was backed up by the fact that he was a well known columnist and he was writing for magazines, newspapers and even appeared on news televisions and programmes, where he wrote or spoke about many subjects, soccer being the one where he was considered the best.
During his last years of life he became a writer and was working on a fictional book about the 2014 World Cup which was hosted by Brazil.
So the smartest soccer players showed us a lot of things, but Socrates was the living figure who would always remind you that you can be great at two things or more, depending on what you want in life.
Did you know these interesting facts about these players and former players? What do you think? Do you have any proposals for a sequel of the smartest soccer players? If you know them we are willing to write about them.
