Brazil legend Pele, who has died aged 82, is widely regarded as the greatest footballer of all time, the iconic sporting figure for a country that regards itself as the game’s spiritual home. Pele’s greatness can be measured by the simple fact that he could make football a spectacle of natural grace and beauty when he missed as much as when he scored.
One of the game’s first global personalities, he scored a world record 1,281 goals in 1,363 games and layered his brilliance across a career spanning from his start as a teenager with Santos to a finish as a money-spinner at New York Cosmos. And wherever football is played, the name of Pele will synonymous with it.
Pele started out as a young boy at Bauru FC in Sao Paulo state under the guidance of former Brazil international Waldemar de Brito. When he came to the attention of Brazil’s elite, he chose to join his mentor’s former club Santos. It was not long before he was making his senior debut, aged 15, on 7 September 1956, scoring the first of more than 1,000 career goals in a 7-1 win against Corinthians Santo Andre.
Pele ensured Santos dominated not only in Brazil but also further afield, winning the Copa Libertadores – South America’s equivalent of the Champions League – in 1962 and 1963 with victories against Penarol of Uruguay in a play-off and then against Argentina’s Boca Juniors, 5-3 on aggregate.
It was inevitable international honours would follow swiftly and he donned the famous Brazil shirt for the first time on 9 July 1957 against Argentina at the Maracana aged 16 years and nine months, scoring number one of 77 goals in 92 appearances for his country in a 2-1 defeat.
Pele’s great rival of the age was Portugal’s legend Eusebio, but when the pair were in opposition in the 1962 Intercontinental Cup, played between the winners of the Copa Libertadores and the European Cup, there was only one winner. Pele was on target twice in Santos’ 3-2 win against Benfica in the Maracana before scoring a hat-trick in a 5-2 victory in return at the Stadium of Light.
In Brazil, Pele will also be associated with the white shirt of Santos, for whom he scored 619 goals in 638 appearances which, coupled with his glorious deeds for his country, gave him – in his homeland at least – the undisputed title of the game’s greatest player.
Pele charmed the globe as a 17-year-old when he scored twice as Brazil beat Sweden 5-2 in the 1958 World Cup final but shone brightest in the galaxy of stars assembled in their legendary 1970 World Cup team, scoring the opening goal in a 4-1 win against Italy in the final in Mexico’s Aztec Stadium.
Pele’s story bookended those two great Brazil sides and when, in the modern game, much is made of the “number 10” role and indeed the shirt itself, Edson Arantes do Nascimento will be regarded by many as the first and the greatest.
When the argument of who was the game’s finest is conducted – almost always in a World Cup context – Brazil’s great rivals Argentina will make the case for the late Diego Maradona, who almost single-handedly, literally according to England after his infamous “Hand Of God” quarter-final goal, took them to World Cup glory in 1986.
Argentines will even offer up Maradona’s successor Lionel Messi as another rival to Pele’s greatness in an argument that will never be fully settled to the satisfaction of either of these great South American adversaries. Pele, though, did not have Maradona’s dark side, one example of which saw the latter ejected from the 1994 World Cup in the United States after testing positive for the drug ephedrine. Messi, however, has since gone on to claim World Cup glory with Argentina at the 2022 tournament.-BBC
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