With the death of the Brazilian Pelé at the age of 82, football loses its last great historical legend, considered the king of the ball, the only footballer to have won the world champion title three times, a player of quality, technique, magic and incomparable goalscoring efficiency.
A complete footballer, brilliant with both legs, a remarkable header and prodigious dribbler, the only one who has exceeded the limits of logic on a playing field, as defined by Johan Cruyff in his day.
Pelé accumulated victories, titles, goals and records in his sports career, from when he made his debut for Santos at the age of 15 (and already scored one goal) until he hung up his boots in 1977 at the age of 37. He had added then, according to the most reliable calculations , 1,283 goals of which nearly 750 were achieved in official matches.
Pelé is the only one of the greats in the history of football who has never played for a European club and if, at the age of 35, he accepted a final offer to play for the New York Cosmos, it was mainly to recover from a series of financial failures .
Pelé was named Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee and at just 21 years old, Brazil distinguished him as an official national treasure, vetoing his transfer to a foreign club. He remains the youngest footballer to have scored in a World Cup, at 17 years and 239 days, and also the youngest world champion, in the 1958 Sweden tournament.
When in 2014 the magazine France Football reviewed the history of the Ballon d'Or corresponding to the stage in which only European players were admitted, it considered that Pelé would have won it seven times between 1958 and 1970 if the regulations had not prevented it and that it would also have been the youngest laureate of all time.
Born on October 23, 1940 in Três Corações, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Edson Arantes do Nascimento grew up in an environment of poverty. His family soon moved to Bauru, already in the state of São Paulo, where the little boy, whom they called Dico, began to help his parents as shoe shiners.
His father, Dondinho, had been a soccer player but a knee injury took him away from the sport and led him to earn a living, without studies or experience, in low-paying jobs that only the most disadvantaged accepted. Despite the opposition of his mother, Dico became fond of soccer and Dondinho instilled in him the basic advice. A talent scout took him to Santos, where after passing all the tests he made his debut at the age of 16.
He played for Santos from 1956 to 1974 and became popularly known as Pelé, a nickname he initially rejected but ended up accepting. His matches with the Brazilian club are legend. He won the Paulista championship eleven times and the Rio-São Paulo final tournament five times, the Copa Libertadores twice and the Intercontinental twice. But his world fame was cemented by the Jules Rimet Cup, the world championship for national teams.
He arrived at the 1958 tournament as a substitute and dragging an injury that prevented him from taking part in the first two games. In the third, decisive against the USSR, Pelé made his debut accompanied by Garrincha and Brazil went to the quarterfinals. He will no longer leave the title: 1-0 against Wales (his goal), 5-2 against France (three goals) and in the final 5-2 against Sweden (two other goals). Pelé, who will soon be known worldwide as O Rei, is the great hero of a special victory because it came after the enormous disappointment of the maracanazo in 1950 and marked the first time that a South American team had won the World Cup in Europe, a feat that has never been has been repeated.
Based on these successes, Pelé's price skyrockets and Santos makes endless tours every year to face the best European teams. At the Camp Nou he performed three times, in 1959, 1960 and 1963. On his first visit he explained that he had played 20 games in the last 35 days. Pelé played 116 games in 1960 and was often injured, but with an amazing recovery capacity.
In the 1962 World Cup, in Chile, he is injured in the second game and will barely be able to contribute to the second Brazilian victory. That same year he won his first world club tournament. Santos beat Eusebio's Benfica 3-2 in the Maracana (two goals from Pelé) and put on an exhibition in Lisbon, where they won 0-5 (hat-trick from Pelé) before conceding a 2-5 final.
In the 1966 World Cup, Pelé was the victim of a fierce pursuit against Bulgaria, against the tough defender Zhechev, and finally fell injured against Portugal, at the feet of Morais. Brazil is eliminated from the tournament and Zhechev will point out: "I started the job and Morais finished it."
Pelé continues to play games without ceasing and scoring one goal after another. In 1969 the calculations announce that he is approaching the thousandth goal of his career and the defenses begin a new persecution: no team wants to go down in history for conceding Pelé's thousandth goal. Finally it was in Maracana, on November 19, and against Vasco de Gama.
In the previous game Pelé had smashed a ball against the crossbar and in another play a defender had cleared a goal sung under the sticks. This time there was a penalty and Pelé converted it: a thousand goals. The celebration was immense and the game was stopped for twenty minutes.
In an interview in 2019 O Rei commented: "With the VAR I don't know if they would have awarded a penalty." Five days earlier, when the tally was at 998, Santos played a friendly against Botafogo. But something strange was floating in the air. Santos scored goals too easily and Pelé also added one, from a penalty. "I wanted to score a thousand in an official match and I was worried that the Botafogo team would get out of the way so that the goal would come then. Our goalkeeper simulated unbearable intestinal discomfort and I myself placed myself under the sticks," Pelé explained years later.
Pelé's third world title comes in Mexico, in 1970. It is the first that television broadcasts in color and is the apotheosis of O Rei. Against Czechoslovakia (4-1, one goal) he tries a spectacular shot with a lob ball from 50 meters that narrowly misses. Against England (1-0) he stars in a sensational shot that goalkeeper Gordon Banks avoids with a historic save. "I scored a goal, but Banks saved it," he said afterwards.
Against Romania (3-2) he scored two goals. Already in the quarterfinals, Brazil beat Peru (4-2) and Uruguay fell in the semifinals (3-1), with another exceptional fantasy by avoiding goalkeeper Mazurkiewicz with a trick without even touching the ball. But the heeled shot does not enter either.
Pelé, 29 years old and fully mature in football, is a constant spectacle, even when he doesn't score. In the final, Brazil beat Italy with a goal from Pelé and a sensational assist from Carlos Alberto to round off the final 4-1. The Jules Rimet Cup stays with Brazil forever. After the game, defender Tarcisio Burgnich explains: “I told myself before the game, he is flesh and blood, like everyone else. I was wrong".
Pelé announced his retirement in 1974, but financial problems led him to accept soccer's offer and in June 1975 he put his boots back on to play for the New York Cosmos, with whom he was proclaimed champion of the United States in 1977 and Give up soccer for good.
Throughout his career he amassed countless records, some incredible. He scored five goals six times in the same match, in the 1958 World Cup final he scored after giving the rival defender a hat, but on one occasion, with Santos, he managed to score after beating three consecutive defenders passing the ball through them. above his head and finally repeated the action in front of the goalkeeper to finish off with a header to an empty goal. In a match against Fluminense in 1961, he ran 70 meters dribbling past opponents, seven in total, before scoring with a spin shot.
Best player of the 20th century for FIFA, world champion of the century for L'Équipe (ahead of Jesse Owens and Eddy Merckx), 77 goals (in 92 games) with Brazil, scorer in four different World Cups… only one record escaped him : Five headed goals in the same game. He had it, and maintains it, Dondinho do Nascimento.
