The Immortal King of Football-Pele
“The only footballer who surpassed the boundaries of logic”, – words by Johan Cruyff.
On October 23, 1940, Pele was born in Três Corações, in the Brazilian province of Minas Gerais to Dondinho, a Fluminense soccer club player, and Celeste Arantes. He was originally named Edson Arantes Do Nascimento inspired by the name of famous American inventor Thomas Edison, later known as Pelé. His original nickname was “Dico” given by his family. He received the nickname “Pelé” during his school days, after mispronouncing the name of his favourite player, Vasco da Gama goalkeeper Bilé. Pelé stated he and his old friends had no idea what the name meant, and the word had no meaning in Portuguese.
Pelé’s childhood was full of poverty. He grew up in Bauru in the state of São Paulo, where he used to work in a tea shop to earn extra money. He got his first football training from his father, but he could not afford a proper football and usually played with a sock stuffed with newspaper and tied with string or a grapefruit.
He played for several amateur teams in his youth, including Sete de Setembro, Canto do Rio, São Paulinho, and Ameriquinha. Pelé led Bauru Atlético Clube juniors (coached by Waldemar de Brito) to two São Paulo state youth championships. In his mid-teens, he played for an indoor football team called Radium. He was part of the region’s first futsal (indoor football) competition and won the first championship and several others. In one of the tournaments, he scored 14 or 15 goals. “That gave me a lot of confidence”, Pelé said, “I knew then not to be afraid of whatever might come”.
Pelé started his club football career at Santos and later shifted to Copa Libertadores, O Milésimo, and New York Cosmos. He scored 680 goals in his official club matches. Pele made his club debut for Santos aged 15 and spent most of his career there. A whopping 643 of these goals were scored for Santos in domestic level tournaments (both national and state levels), the Copa Libertadores, and the Intercontinental Cup (the precursor to the FIFA Club World Cup). He scored 37 goals in three years with US club New York Cosmos, which he joined in 1975 at 35. He played 64 official games for the American club before retiring in 1977.
Pelé played his first international match against Argentina at the age of 16 on 7 July 1957 at the Maracanã with a 2–1 defeat, where, he scored his first goal for Brazil, and became the youngest goalscorer for his country.
The following year in 1958, he played his first game in the World Cup in Sweden. The 17-year-old scored three goals in a 5-2 semi-final win over France and two more in the final leading Brazil to achieve the World Cup title with a 5-2 win over the hosts. He won his first major title with Santos in 1958 when the team won the Campeonato Paulista. He finished the tournament as top scorer with 58 goals, a record that stands to date.
He scored 77 goals in 92 international football matches, making him Brazil’s all-time top scorer. He holds Guinness world records for the most career goals 1,283 goals in 1,363 games and is the youngest winner of a FIFA World Cup
Pele enjoyed massive popularity when he briefly stopped a war in 1967. Factions of a civil war in Nigeria agreed to a brief ceasefire so the football star could play an exhibition match there. In 1997, Pele was knighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. He is the only player who won the World Cup three times, in 1958, 1962, and 1970, a football milestone no other player has yet achieved. In 2000, Fifa named Pele as the Player of the Century along with Argentina’s Diego Maradona,
On 29th December 2022, Pele took his last breath at the age of 82, in the Israelite Albert Einstein Hospital, where he was undergoing treatment for colon cancer.
“When God created Pele, he put everything into him: speed, strength, momentum, technique, shooting, heading, dribbling, everything.” Zico (former Brazil player)