Pelé

• 1. Introduction

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  Edson Arantes do Nascimento was born on the 23rd of October 1940 in Três Corações, Minas Gerais, Brazil, and he died on the 29th of December 2022 at the age of 82. The world knew him by one word: Pelé. He won three FIFA World Cup titles, scored more than a thousand goals across a professional career spanning two decades, and was named the Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee in 1999. Yet the numbers only begin to describe what made him singular. A boy who grew up too poor to afford a proper football, who stuffed socks with newspaper and kicked grapefruits through the streets of Bauru, became the player whom Sir Bobby Charlton felt "as though football was invented for." How did a child from that street reach those heights? And what happened to the man once the roar of the stadiums fell silent?

• 2. The Boy from Bauru

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  Pelé's father, a footballer himself who played for Fluminense under the name Dondinho, taught his son the game before the family had enough money to buy a ball. The family settled in Bauru, in the state of São Paulo, where Pelé worked as a servant in tea shops to help make ends meet. He played for amateur sides with names like Sete de Setembro and Ameriquinha, and he led the Bauru Atlético Clube junior squad, coached by Waldemar de Brito, to two São Paulo state youth championships.

  A street game called futsal would prove more important than any of those trophies. In his mid-teens, futsal was becoming popular across Bauru, and Pelé joined a team called Radium. He played in the first futsal competition in the region and won the first championship there. Pelé later credited the game with sharpening his instincts: the pitch was smaller, the pace faster, and every player was always close. "I knew then not to be afraid of whatever might come," he said, recalling a tournament where officials initially thought he was too young to play, before he finished as the top scorer with 14 or 15 goals.

  His nickname arrived at school through a mistake. He reportedly mispronounced the name of his favourite player, Bilé, a goalkeeper for Vasco da Gama, and the garbled version stuck. In his 2006 autobiography, Pelé wrote that he had no idea what the name meant, and neither did his school friends. He would eventually learn that "péle" means "miracle" in Hebrew.

• 3. The Making of a King

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  In 1956, Waldemar de Brito brought the 15-year-old Pelé to Santos, an industrial port city near São Paulo, and told the club's directors that the teenager would be "the greatest football player in the world." Pelé impressed Santos coach Lula during his trial at the Estádio Vila Belmiro and signed a professional contract in June 1956. His senior debut came on the 7th of September 1956, a 7-1 victory over Corinthians de Santo André, in which he scored the first goal of his career.

  When the 1957 season began, Pelé was given a starting place at 16, and he immediately became the top scorer in the Campeonato Paulista. By 1958, he had finished the league season with 58 goals, a record that still stands today. Ten months after turning professional, he was called up to the Brazil national team.

  After the 1958 World Cup, wealthy European clubs including Real Madrid, Juventus and Manchester United attempted to sign him without success. Inter Milan obtained a contract for him, but the club's owner Angelo Moratti tore it up at the request of Santos's chairman, following a revolt by Santos's own supporters. The Brazilian government eventually intervened in 1961, when President Jânio Quadros formally declared Pelé an "official national treasure" so he could not be transferred abroad. A teenager had become state property.

• 4. The 1958 World Cup

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  Pelé arrived in Sweden for the 1958 World Cup carrying a knee injury that forced him to sit out the first two matches. A team psychologist told Brazil's coach Vicente Feola that the 17-year-old was "infantile" and not fit to play. Feola chose to play him anyway, against the USSR, and Pelé provided an assist in Brazil's 2-0 victory.

  He became the tournament's youngest goalscorer after scoring against Wales in the quarter-finals, then scored a hat-trick during the second half of the semi-final against France. On the 29th of June 1958, Brazil faced Sweden in the final. Pelé scored twice, including a goal in which he flicked the ball over a defender before volleying it into the corner of the net; the goal was later selected as one of the best in World Cup history. When the final whistle blew, Pelé passed out on the field. His teammate Garrincha revived him, and he wept while his teammates crowded around him. Swedish defender Sigvard Parling would later say: "When Pelé scored the fifth goal in that Final, I have to be honest and say I felt like applauding."

  His number 10 shirt that tournament was not a deliberate choice. The Brazilian Football Federation had not allocated shirt numbers, so FIFA assigned Pelé the number 10. It would follow him for the rest of his life. He finished the competition with six goals in four matches and was named the best young player of the tournament.

• 5. Santos and Club Glory

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  Between 1962 and 1963, Santos constructed an era of club dominance that has rarely been matched in South American football. In the 1962 Copa Libertadores final, Santos beat the defending champions Peñarol 3-0, with Pelé scoring twice. Later that year, in the Intercontinental Cup against Benfica in Lisbon, Santos won 5-2 and Pelé scored a hat-trick. Benfica goalkeeper Costa Pereira remarked afterward: "I arrived hoping to stop a great man, but I went away convinced I had been undone by someone who was not born on the same planet as the rest of us."

  Santos defended both titles in 1963. They overcame a Botafogo side featuring Garrincha and Jairzinho in the Copa Libertadores semi-final, and Pelé contributed five goals throughout the tournament. His partnership with Coutinho, built on intricate one-two plays, drove much of the club's attack across this period.

  On the 19th of November 1969, Pelé scored his 1,000th goal in all competitions, from a penalty kick against Vasco da Gama at the Maracanã Stadium. The moment was called O Milésimo, "The Thousandth," and the entire country stopped to watch. He had also scored what became known as the gol de placa in March 1961, a goal against Fluminense at the Maracanã in which he received the ball near his own penalty area and ran the length of the pitch through the opposition before scoring. According to the newspaper O Globo, the crowd gave him a two-minute standing ovation. A plaque was mounted on the stadium wall in tribute, and the phrase "gol de placa" entered Brazilian football vocabulary as the term for a goal worthy of permanent commemoration.

• 6. The 1970 World Cup

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  Brazil's 1970 squad in Mexico is frequently described as the greatest football team ever assembled. The front five of Jairzinho, Pelé, Gerson, Tostão, and Rivellino created an attacking force that had no apparent equal. In the first group stage match against Czechoslovakia, Pelé controlled a 50-yard pass with his chest before scoring. Later in the same game, he narrowly missed a shot from the halfway line.

  During the group stage match against England, Pelé's header was blocked by goalkeeper Gordon Banks. The save became known as the "save of the century." Years later, Pelé said: "I have scored more than a thousand goals in my life and the thing people always talk to me about is the one I didn't score."

  In the final against Italy at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, Pelé scored the opening goal with a header, which was Brazil's 100th World Cup goal. His leap into the arms of Jairzinho after the goal became one of the most iconic images in the history of the sport. Pelé then set up Brazil's third and fourth goals. The final, fourth goal, which involved almost every outfield player on the team, ended with a blind pass from Pelé that reached Carlos Alberto, who scored. Brazil won 4-1. Italian defender Tarcisio Burgnich, who had marked Pelé throughout the match, was quoted as saying: "I told myself before the game, he's made of skin and bones just like everyone else. But I was wrong." Pelé was responsible for 53% of Brazil's goals across the entire tournament, through scoring and assists combined.

• 7. After the Game

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  In 1975, Pelé retired from Brazilian club football after 19 seasons with Santos, where his 643 goals made him the club's all-time top scorer. That record stood until Lionel Messi surpassed it with Barcelona in December 2020. Pelé then came out of retirement to sign with the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League, and a chaotic press conference at New York's 21 Club announced his arrival. Club spokesman John O'Reilly said: "We had superstars in the United States but nothing at the level of Pelé. Everyone wanted to touch him, shake his hand, get a photo with him."

  During his first public appearance in Boston, he was injured by a crowd of fans who surrounded him and had to be evacuated on a stretcher. He drew a league-record crowd of 77,891 for a playoff match against the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. In June of his final season, the 37-year-old Pelé scored a hat-trick against the Tampa Bay Rowdies. The Cosmos won 3-0 that day.

  Pelé played his final official match on the 28th of August 1977, when the Cosmos beat the Seattle Sounders 2-1 in the Soccer Bowl. On the 1st of October 1977, he closed his career with an exhibition match between the Cosmos and Santos at Giants Stadium, broadcast on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Muhammad Ali and Bobby Moore attended. Pelé scored a 30-yard free kick in the first half for the Cosmos, then switched to play for Santos in the second half. It began to rain. A Brazilian newspaper printed the following headline the next morning: "Even The Sky Was Crying."

  After retiring, he was appointed Brazil's Minister of Sport by President Fernando Cardoso in January 1995, a position he held until April 1998. He proposed legislation to reduce corruption in Brazilian football that became known as the "Pelé law." In 1997, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him an honorary knighthood at Buckingham Palace. The city of Santos inaugurated the Museu Pelé in 2014, investing approximately $22 million in a collection of 2,400 pieces of memorabilia. In April 2023, after a campaign with 125,000 signatories, the nickname "pelé" was added to the Michaelis Portuguese-language dictionary as a synonym for "exceptional, incomparable, unique."

• 8. A Final Reckoning

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  Pelé died on the 29th of December 2022, from multiple organ failure, a complication of colon cancer first diagnosed in 2021. He was 82. The outgoing Brazilian president declared a three-day period of national mourning. At FIFA headquarters in Zürich, the flags of all 211 member associations were flown at half-mast. The Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and the Maracanã Stadium were lit up in his honour, as were Wembley Stadium in London and the CONMEBOL headquarters in Paraguay.

  His funeral began at Vila Belmiro stadium in Santos on the 2nd of January 2023, where his body lay in an open coffin draped with the flags of Brazil and Santos FC. More than 230,000 people attended the public wake, with some waiting three hours in line. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and FIFA president Gianni Infantino were among the mourners. Brazilian television channels suspended regular broadcasting to cover the procession. Pelé was buried at the Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica.

  He was survived by his mother, Dona Celeste, who was 100 years old at the time of his death, though she had been in a vegetative state since 2019. In March 2023, the Kigali Pelé Stadium in Rwanda was renamed in his honor at the 73rd FIFA Congress. Journalist Simon Hattenstone had once compared the effect Pelé had on people to that of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela. Andy Warhol once remarked that instead of 15 minutes of fame, Pelé would have 15 centuries.