Pelé, The King of Football

PELÉ THE KINGTo provide a brief summary of Pelé’s illustrious career, the following is a quote from an obituary I wrote for Pelé in January, 2023, a few days after his death:'No book on the World Cup could ever be written without some reference to the player who, more than anyone else, created it. The 1930, 1934, 1938, 1950 and 1954 World Cups passed by without great excitement but the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, the first to be televised, heralded the arrival of an exceptional player who was going to grace the event for the next twelve years. Suddenly the World Cup was alive, right through the 1960s until his grand finale in 1970 in Mexico when we all witnessed, in Pelé’s own words, the very best of the 'beautiful game,' and Pelé’, during those twelve years, never once lost that captivating smile and engaging personality for which he was so famous.At the 1958 World Cup he took the football world by storm scoring six goals in four matches including a hat trick against France in the semi-final and two more in the final against Sweden. What we didn’t know then was that he had already scored over fifty league goals for Santos, the first at the age of fifteen. In his year of World Cup baptism, in 1958, for club and country, as a 17-year-old, he amassed 75 goals in 53 matches. By the time he was twenty-one, in 1962, he had scored over 300 goals including 34 for his country. He took his club, Santos to two Intercontinental Trophies, that’s the winners of the South American Championship pitted against the European Champions. He has been a God to the Brazilian people for over sixty years, the most revered person in Brazil’s history. They will all be stunned, having to face life without Pelé. Brazil’s favelas will also be mourning. They know that Pelé has always been one of them. He started life with nothing, not even a pair of shoes in which to play football. Brazilian kids don’t need shoes. They play bare-footed and that’s how they learn to control the ball.He stayed with Santos for the whole of his Brazilian career, was created a National Treasure to stop him going to a European club and was on the point of retiring when out of the blue in 1974, he received an offer to play for New York Cosmos in the newly formed North American Soccer League (NASL), and, for the next three years, from 1975 to 1977, he played in front of huge crowds, all eager to get a glimpse of the footballing legend, for a while teaming up with Carlos Alberto and Franz Beckenbauer. He also played against George Best, who he graciously labelled the best player in the world. At New York Cosmos, he played 107 matches and scored 67 goals.As a further example of the massive impact Pelé had on football, when he retired in 1977, both New York Cosmos and the entire NASL collapsed and football in the USA went into decline and their national team didn’t qualify for another World Cup until 1990.Pelé won the 1958 and 1962 World Cups, followed by a lapse in form and injury in 1966 in England but he regained his form in 1970 and was part of that amazing team of Jairsinho, Carlos Alberto, Rivellino, Clodoaldo and Tostão who won the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. He remains the only player to have won three World Cups, a record which will surely never be equalled.When I lived in Brazil, I watched him play for Santos on several occasions and I discovered that not only was he a great player but he was also an amazing person who never stopped smiling and who always had time for other people. He was a God to his colleagues and also his opponents, who often in his early career, had too much respect to tackle him and lived in fear of injuring him.No one in football deserves the name 'King' more than Pelé. He was simply the best. The number 10 shirt will be his forever. R.I.P football legend, Edson Arantes do Nascimento aka 'Pelé'