I’ve heard many stories of Porto Diao. No one really knows where he comes from, as he never spoke much during the time I met him; someone in our camp asked him where he was born one night when we were grilling some burgers and potatoes. I wasn’t there when this happened, someone told me afterwards but all he said was:

“My name is Porto. My hometown has no name, and it should not matter. Your place of origin does not make you who you are.”

I heard the man who asked him this took off during the night while no one was watching and was never heard from again. Such is the impact of Porto Diao. He is not stylish by any means, but he has that sort of silent charm McQueen used to have during his day. You would always hear these extraordinary stories about him and about the incredible things he did during his youth. He was 58 when I met him, but he didn’t look a day older than 25. The stories where unbelievable and no one actually saw him perform any of the things that were said about him but Porto Diao’s presence alone made a believer out of you. It was incredible, how magnetic and charismatic he was without even saying a word. I didn’t know anything about him and it was already as if I had been friends with him for years… and those stories, man. Those stories.

It was said that where he came from, this… Town With No Name, had a very rich soccer culture. In fact, it seems that said town still exists and his family lives there, secluded from everything and everyone. A conscious decision made by the denizens of the village, because they did not want the rest of the world to know what exactly the human body was capable of doing… the physical prowess of the townsfolk, if the legends are true, would surpass anything ever known to man. It’s one of those things that you never hear about; those incredible things people with special abilities do but are never divulged to the mass media for fear of disruption of the status quo. The Town With No Name has its label on purpose… no one knows.

Porto is a soccer legend. Everyone in the most prestigious social circles of the sport knows of him. Ask them about this man though, and all you will get is dismissal. They all know… they all know that if Porto Diao were to be discovered, the face of the biggest, most popular sport in the world would change forever and every member of its culture will take years to catch up to him… he’s that powerful. He’s that strong.

Rebel, unabashed power. It was said that once, when he was 8 years old and practicing at the outskirts of the city with the ball his father gave him due to “past incidents of mass destruction within town that urged for the creation of a mandate that obligated Porto Diao to practice with his soccer ball outside of the city and only outside of the city,” every morning a plane headed to the far east would fly by with its roaring engines and ruckus. Porto would see it rudely fly by over his head and fly above the ocean in front of him… until one morning. One morning where he was dribbling the ball with his knees and feet, the plane roared by once more. The boy was so upset by the aircraft, so enraged, his angered bottled up to the point of it exploding, channeling its power to his foot, unleashing so much power to the ball he had that it flew high into the sky… so high it made a dent on the plane’s belly before being shot back to the ground. Porto saw this as an omen; every morning then he would wait until the massive plane flew by, kicking his thrashed soccer ball and sending it 32,000 feet in the air to make a dent on the plane’s lower half, for the boy to run into the ocean to retrieve said ball from the ocean and try again the next day. This happened for 6 days. On the 7^th day, Porto waited for the plane to return from its voyage, coming from the horizon. He waited until he had a clear shot. The wait was eternal, but when the moment struck he sent the ball straight to the air and through the hull, shoot past the passenger isle and exit through the roof of the plane. The aircraft promptly split in two afterwards and the remains landed on an island not far from where Porto was.

Once he kicked a ball so hard it disappeared out of thin air. It returned 8 minutes later on the same spot where it was left on, steaming hot. It is said that he has sons, who have sons of their own yet he, as I said, doesn’t look like he’s out of his 20’s. The shore near his town, Jeffries’ Bay, is said to be one of the beaches with the highest killer waves in the world, and locals hold Porto Diao responsible for the tidal shift that created the waves as a result of his constant practice against the current. So many unbelievable stories… yet you are inclined to believe them because when you’re around Porto Diao, you sense that anything is possible. He is not just a soccer legend… he is a legend, in the truest sense of the word.

Happy birthday, wherever you are.

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