King Pelé, legend of world football, has died aged 82 (2024)

O Rei. The King, quite simply, with all a royal's attributes. His crown, unchallenged, not even by Cruyff, Platini, Maradona, Zidane, Messi and Ronaldo. His treasure, the 1,283 goals he scored in 1,366 games in his 20-year career (according to his own count), a record that has continually defied modern football and its scientific methods since the 1970s. His narcissism, which frequently led him to talk about himself in the third person and compare his uniqueness to Michelangelo and Beethoven. Two rare examples, in his eyes, of characters who, like him, had received a "gift from God." Like Elvis Presley for rock, Pelé, who died on Thursday, December 29, at the age of 82, was the absolute king of football. The Chosen One. After all, is he not the only player to have won three World Cups, in1958, 1962 and 1970?

An eternal kid

According to Johan Cruyff's exact words, he was, above all, "the only footballer who surpassed the boundaries oflogic." Slender but endowed with a supernatural technique with his two feet and the flexibility of capoeiristas, barely breaking 1.7 meters in height but capable of prodigious vertical spring, Pelé, before being a divinity, was a player, in the literal sense: a playful man.

An eternal child for whom football remained a game where he could express his inventiveness and phenomenal nerve, his innate sense of "improvisation" – as his captain Carlos Alberto called it – enabled him to make moves that were adapted to each situation and never repeated. The essence of a work of art.

With him, the world's biggest arenas, starting with his first, the Maracaña in Rio de Janeiro, were transformed into giant playgrounds. This is where the Brazilian pixie made fools of defenders, who suddenly became clumsy, inept and petrified when playing against him.

For him, to play was to try, even at the risk of losing. As such, Pelé – and this is the mark of his genius – is probably the only footballer whose failures were elevated to the rank of masterpieces. The two most beautiful examples date from his last World Cup, his Mexican apotheosis in 1970. As soon as he entered the competition, he stunned the spectators in Guadalajara by daring to lob a 50-meter shot at the expense of Czechoslovakian goalkeeper Ivo Viktor, missing the target by just a few centimeters.

Lifted like a trophy

In the semi-final against Uruguay, after a cross-pitch pass from Tostao, he ran around the keeper without touching the ball, letting it slip to the left of Ladislao Mazurkiewicz, a dangerous spider who had left his web to catch it on the edge of the penalty zone. After getting around the unlucky goalkeeper on his right side, Pelé cheekily collected the orb but crossed his shot too far. Missed! In a way, at least. Of this failed exploit, what people remembered was not the outcome but the brave attempt and the method, with a body feint worthy of the ginga, the capoeira's misleading footwork.

An altruistic player, Pelé also knew how to shine a light on others. Still in the 1970 World Cup, it was once again he who was behind "the save of the century" by the English goalkeeper Gordon Banks on a close-range header ("I scored a goal but Banks saved it," he later commented) and, in the final against Italy, he gave a perfect example of goal construction when he blindly passed the ball to Carlos Alberto for the final goal (4-1). He left that competition in triumph, shirtless, lifted like a trophy by the crowd of Mexico City's Azteca Stadium.

For the first time, people were able to admire their idol on color television, in his shining gold and green Brazilian kit. Pelé had just offered Brazil a third title, opening the score with a header after rising above Milan defender Tarcisio Burgnich, who towered above him from several centimeters and yet had to extend his arm in desperation. "Before the game, I told myself that he was made of flesh, like all of us," lamented his opponent. "Only later did I realize I was wrong."

On July 18, 1971, during a friendly match at the Maracaña against Yugoslavia, Pelé appeared for the last time in the Seleçao jersey. Without him, things would not be the same. For 15 years, he had transformed football into a party.

'Small and rather skinny'

The fireworks first burst in Bauru, a city in the state of Sao Paulo. At the age of 13, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the son of an amateur football player, played for the local Atletico Clube, perfecting his technique by playing indoor football, a sport recently introduced in Brazil. The young boy was born further northeast, on October 23, 1940, in Tres Coraçoes, a town in Minas Gerais where the arrival of electricity had transformed the lives of its inhabitants. He was therefore given the name Edson in homage to Thomas Edison.

His nickname of Pelé would come from a distortion of Bilé, the name of AC Bauru's goalkeeper, to whom his friends compared him to mock him. Did Pelé also play as a goalkeeper? Yes, for a simple reason he explained in Pelé: The Autobiography:"I often played as a goalkeeper because if I played as a striker from the beginning of the match, our team always won and the other team didn't want to play anymore."

Before that, the young boy who worked jobs like shoeshining had discovered his dexterity by juggling knotted socks and grapefruits. He wrote: "My father saw that I was small and rather skinny (...). Since I couldn't push others out of the way or jump higher than them, I just had to be better at it. I had to learn to make the ball an extension of myself."

A first professional contract at 15

He was soon spotted by Waldemar de Brito, a former international player who had played in the 1934 World Cup. This mentor presented him to the leaders of Santos FC as the future "greatest player of the world." Although Pelé said the club was a "modest" one before he came, this wasn't entirely accurate. Dressed all in white, the "Fishes" of the Paulist port city were already the two-time winners of Sao Paulo's regional championship, Brazil's most prestigious tournament along with Rio's. Due to the country's immense size, transportation problems and lack of financial resources, there was no national league before 1971.

Pelé signed his first professional contract in June 1956. Aged only 15, de Brito's prodigy would soon fulfill his prophecy. In his debut with the Santos first team, he immediately scored the first of many goals. Ten months later, in July 1957, he was called to the national team to play at the Maracaña against Argentina.

He became the youngest striker in international football history. In his first season, he was the top scorer in the Sao Paulo league and would soon discover a new continent and make his name known in the entire world. Despite a sore knee, he made the trip to Sweden when it hosted the World Cup in June 1958.

Youngest World Cup scorer

By entering the Gothenburg pitch for the Auriverde's third group match against the Soviet Union, Pelé became the youngest player in the history of the World Cup, aged only 17. He also became its youngest scorer when he led his team to the quarter-finals by breaking through the Welsh defense (1-0). Lastly, he became its youngest finalist and winner when he scored "only" two goals against the Swedes (5-2). In the semi-final, the French team, featuring players like Raymond Kopa and Just Fontaine, fell victim to a similarly punishing score when the striker pulled off a hat trick.

Brazil was finally able to lift the Jules Rimet trophy and overcome the trauma of the 1950 "Maracanaço," the unexpected defeat at home in a final against Uruguay. A victory made possible by the synergy between its two wonder players, the other being the mad dribbler Garrincha, the "bent-legged angel" as he was called by the poet Vinicius de Moraes, the people's joy and the Botafogo little bird. "Mané" Garrincha was the tragic double of the radiant Pelé. When these two were in the same lineup, the Seleçao never lost a single match.

A 'non-exportable national treasure'

At home, the number 10 kept the show going. In his club, he was the star of the "Santasticos", a golden generation custodian of the "joga bonito" ("beautiful game," an expression popularized by Pelé) that was also embodied by the goalkeeper Gilmar, the defender Mauro Ramos, his offensive partner Coutinho and his quasi-namesake Pepe, his accomplice on the left flank.

In 1958, during his second season at Santos, Pelé won the Paulista championship, scoring a staggering 58 goals in 38 games. The following year, this troop of artists triumphed in the Torneio Rio-São Paulo – which crowned it as national champion – before dominating the continent by lifting the Copa Libertadores in 1961, at the expense of Montevideo's Peñarol club.

Nothing could stop them. Santos officially became the best team in the world by winning the 1962 Intercontinental Cup against the other giant in Portuguese-speaking football, Eusebio's Benfica. In Lisbon, they won 5-2, with an entranced Pelé scoring a hat-trick. The Paulist club would preserve its South American and global supremacy in the following editions by defeating the Porteños of Boca Juniors and AC Milan.

As he would have done to protect cultural heritage, the ephemeral president Jânio Quadros decreed Pelé a 'non-exportable national treasure.'

The stadiums in America, Europe and Africa demanded Pelé and the "Santasticos" embarked on an exhausting cycle of tours and gala matches modeled on the Harlem Globetrotters basketball players. In 1960 and 1961, they played in the Paris Tournament, which they won by defeating Racing and Stade de Reims. Offers from the biggest European clubs – Real Madrid and AC Milan – poured in to entice the superstar, but as he would have done to protect cultural heritage, the ephemeral president Jânio Quadros decreed Pelé "a non-exportable national treasure."

A first resounding failure

On the pitch, his glory had its downsides. Because of his reputation, Pelé was targeted by the most fearsome "butchers." He bore the cost of it in England during the 1966 World cup. The Brazilians came with a confidence that bordered on complacency, as they had managed to keep their trophy four years earlier in Chile. In Viñadel Mar and Santiago, they even had the luxury of dispensing with the services of Pelé, who was injured in the second game and did not play in the rest of the tournament. Garrincha and Vava took advantage of this situation to take the lead.

At Goodison Park in Liverpool, the star suffered his first resounding defeat. Assailed by a Bulgarian defender and rested during the defeat against the Hungarians, he could not prevent the team's first-round elimination after yet another loss against Portugal. The frightful halfback Joao Morais forced him to finish the game hobbling on one leg, as substitutions were not allowed at the time.

Disgusted and reckless, Pelé said he would no longer play in the World Cup because it did not do enough to protect offensive attackers or sanction the Europeans' increasingly physical style of play. The rest is well known: his brilliant revenge four years later in Mexico, an edition marked by the introduction of red and yellow cards.

'King of New York'

The Old Continent did not deserve him. After 19 seasons with Santos, the "Rei" came out of his semi-retirement to become the "King of New York." At 34 years old, he yielded to the sirens' call of the newly created North American League and especially to its generous compensation, with an annual salary of $1.4 million over seven years, a record at the time.

While he did end up accepting the proposal of the Cosmos, it was mainly because he had naively become riddled with debts run up by his unscrupulous entourage. It took the intervention of one of his admirers, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to overcome the resistance of the military junta in power in Brasilia and let him go.

Pelé became a trailblazer when he moved to the Big Apple in the summer of 1975 to develop football in the United States

Pelé became a trailblazer when he moved to the Big Apple in the summer of 1975 to develop football in the United States, or soccer as they like to call it, joined later by other celebrities like Italy's Giorgio Chinaglia, the "Kaiser" Franz Beckenbauer and Pelé's compatriot Carlos Alberto. Two months later, he won his last trophy, the North American championship, in front of 70,000 fans at Giants Stadium, closing the curtain in a farewell match between the Cosmos and Santos. He played one half in each of the only two teams he had ever known and scored his last goal with a free kick.

'Fifteen centuries of fame'

Becoming involved with UNICEF and UNESCO, Pelé did not relinquish the limelight. In New York, he tasted the pleasures of the jet-set lifestyle by becoming an attraction in the famous Studio 54, introduced in the local milieu by a former football player and Scottish rocker Rod Stewart.

As a guitar player and a fan of Joao Gilberto, Pelé also would also have liked to be recognized for his compositions, including his 1969 duet with bossa nova diva Elis Regina. Yet it was on the big screen that he reappeared in1981 in the John Huston film Victory, playing the role of Corporal Luis Fernandez. A football version of The Great Escape, it starred professional actors like Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine as well as former footballers like Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles and Kazimierz Deyna. For Pelé, it was simply a way to keep himself entertained, as his numerous advertising contracts allowed the businessman to maintain a more than comfortable lifestyle.

Pelé returned to the arena by getting into politics when he accepted in 1995 to manage Brazil's sports ministry after the new (center-left) president Henrique Cardoso offered it to him. The first black man in his country to head a ministry, he stayed there for three years, managing to get a law passed in his name, which he said: "freed all Brazilian footballers from slavery."

He explained his earlier statement to Le Monde in January 2012: "Before me, a player was the club's absolute property: he was not free to get transferred, even when his contract had ended. When some clubs had no more money, they would go to the bank and say,'I'll give you my player.'"

He had to go to war against corruption and the two satraps of Brazilian football, Ricardo Teixeira, president of the federation, and his father-in-law Joao Havelange, Blatter's predecessor as head of FIFA. Powerful lobbies actively tried to gut his law.

"People always ask me, 'When will a new Pelé be born?' Never! My father and my mother closed the factory," he said in the same interview to cut off any question regarding which football players were his heirs, before adding,"Pelé is the most widely known name in the world."

With him, aplomb and boastfulness were always mixed with joy and generosity. Everything he did was done in excess and this excess was contagious. "Pelé is one of the few to contradict my theory: instead of fifteen minutes of fame, he will have fifteen centuries," said Andy Warhol, who in1977 immortalized the icon in his New York studio with a portrait of Pelé as he was: all smiles, enhanced with exuberant blue and green, the ball stuck to his forehead, about to shoot a header.