Eusébio da Silva Ferreira GCIH GCM (European Portuguese: [ewˈzɛβju ðɐ ˈsilvɐ fɨˈʁɐjɾɐ]; 25 January 1942 – 5 January 2014), nicknamed the "Black Panther", the "Black Pearl" or "O Rei" ("The King"), was a Portuguese footballer who played as a striker. He is considered one of the greatest players of all time as well as Benfica's best player ever. He was known for his speed, technique, athleticism and right-footed shot, making him a prolific goalscorer, accumulating 733 goals in 745 matches. Eusébio was the first ever player to win European Golden Boot, World Cup Golden Boot and UCL Golden Boot. In the UEFA Champions League, he ranks second for the all-time Portuguese top goalscorers, scoring 47 goals.

Eusébio helped Portugal reach third place at the 1966 FIFA World Cup, being the top goalscorer of the tournament with nine goals. He remains Portugal's all-time top scorer at the World Cup with 9 goals in just 6 appearances. He won the Ballon d'Or in 1965 and was runner-up in 1962 and 1966. He is Benfica's all-time top scorer with 473 goals in 440 competitive matches. There, his honours include eleven Primeira Liga titles and a European Cup, also being integral in reaching additional European Cup finals in 1963, 1965 and 1968. He is the second-highest goalscorer, behind Alfredo Di Stéfano, in the pre-Champions League era of the European Cup with 47 goals. He was the European Cup top scorer in 1964–65, 1965–66 and 1967–68. He also won the Bola de Prata for the Primeira Liga top scorer a record seven times. He was the first ever player to win the European Golden Boot, in 1968, a feat he replicated in 1973.

From his retirement until his death, Eusébio was an ambassador of football and was one of the most recognizable faces of his generation. His name often appears in best player of all time lists and polls by football critics and fans. He was elected the ninth-best footballer of the 20th century in a poll by the IFFHS and the tenth-best footballer of the 20th century in a poll by the World Soccer magazine. Pelé named Eusébio as one of the 125 best living footballers in his 2004 FIFA 100 list. He was seventh in the online poll for UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll. In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA's Jubilee, he was selected as the Golden Player of Portugal by the Portuguese Football Federation as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years. Shortly after Eusébio's death, Di Stéfano stated: "For me Eusébio will always be the best player of all time".

Eusébio was born in the Mafalala neighbourhood, Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), Portuguese Mozambique on 25 January 1942. His parents were Laurindo António da Silva Ferreira, a white railroad worker from Malanje, Portuguese Angola, and his wife Elisa Anissabeni, a black Mozambican woman. He was the fourth child of his parents, out of five children they had (Jaime, Alberto, Adelino, Eusébio and Lucília). Elisa Anissabeni later had another three children from a second marriage (Gilberto, Inocência and Fernando). Growing up in an extremely poor neighbourhood, he used to skip school classes to play barefoot football with his friends on improvised pitches and using improvised footballs. His father also played football in his youth and supported Lisbon's SL Benfica and its affiliate team in Portuguese Mozambique, Grupo Desportivo de Lourenço Marques. He died from tetanus when Eusébio was eight years old in 1950, so the widowed Elisa almost exclusively raised young Eusébio alone. Absorbed by football from an early age, Eusébio studied until the 4th grade (concluded through a final exam when he was already in mainland Portugal), the only among his brothers and sisters without post-primary education. Three of his siblings became engineers.

Eusébio first started to play for a local amateur team called Os Brasileiros (The Brazilians), in honour of the great Brazil national team of the 1950s that he and his friends formed, they would play under the names of some of those superstars. The balls they used were made of socks stuffed with newspapers rolled into spheres.

With some friends, Eusébio tried to join Desportivo de Lourenço de Marques, his favourite team and a Benfica feeder team (also the team where Mário Coluna had played before his move to Benfica) but was rejected, without even being given a chance to prove his worth. He was also rejected by Ferroviário de Lourenço Marques. At 12, he then tried his luck with Sporting Clube de Lourenço Marques (branch number 6 of Sporting Lisbon), which accepted him as well as a group of his friends who lived in Eusébio's neighbourhood. There he had his first training sessions supervised by a coaching staff, received his first ever football equipment and played competitive football in an organized way at both youth level and the main senior team. At 15, according to him, he was spotted by a former Juventus goalkeeper turned scout: "When I was 15, Juventus of Italy, wanted to hire me, because one of their scouts, who had been a famous Italian goalkeeper for them, saw me and told them that there was a boy with a potential, that it would be good to take advantage while I was still unknown. Juventus proposed but my mum never wanted to hear anything from anyone". Eusébio played his first two seasons with Sporting Lourenço Marques' youth team while he also made a few appearances in the senior team. Then he was promoted to the main squad and won the Campeonato Provincial de Moçambique and the Campeonato Distrital de Lourenço Marques in his last season with the club, in 1960. From 1957 to 1960, Eusébio scored 77 goals in 42 appearances for the main team of Sporting Lourenço Marques.^{[citation needed]}

On 15 December 1960, Eusébio arrived in Lisbon, when he was 18 years old, but he only joined Benfica in May 1961, as a 19-year-old, after the transfer from his local club Sporting Lourenço Marques for 400,000 Portuguese escudos (equivalent to €193,219 in 2023) was finally unlocked. It was a lengthy process and the legality of the signing was disputed by Sporting CP, who also tried to sign him. In the first few weeks of 1961, the Portuguese Directorate-General for Sports ruled in favour of Sporting CP's interests; soon after, the Portuguese Football Federation ruled in favour of Benfica's arguments. The agreement to sign Eusébio with Benfica's local representative (Rodrigues de Carvalho, a major) had been mediated in Mozambique, in June 1960, by one of Eusébio's brothers who was an engineer by training and intervened as an informal sports agent on behalf of his brother, and included the payment of 250,000 Portuguese escudos to Elisa Anissabene, Eusébio's mother (an initial offer of 110,000 escudos which raised to the final 250,000 escudos in November amid growing interest from other football clubs). Benfica discovered Eusébio through the efforts of Brazilian former player José Carlos Bauer, who saw him at Lourenço Marques in 1960. Although he preferred playing with his right foot, Eusébio could use his left just as well. At times, Eusébio would surprise opponents with his dribbling ability, seemingly a talent he preferred to keep secret. Bauer first recommended Eusébio to his former club, São Paulo, but the Tricolor turned him down.

Bauer had been asked by his former coach at São Paulo, Béla Guttmann, to keep an eye out for talented players during a ten-week tour to Africa, and when São Paulo could not afford the asking price for Eusébio, Bauer then recommended him to Guttmann, who was coaching Benfica at the time. Guttman moved quickly and signed him.