Football legend Emile Pelé: from soccer to braneworld, to Brazil, when Brazil won the World Cup in 1960-70 he told CNN
The soccer legend is being remembered. Pelé’s first club, Santos FC, responded to the news on Twitter with the words “eternal” shared next to an image of a crown.
Health problems persisted for much of Pelé’s later life. He underwent surgery to remove a Tumor from his Right Colon in September 2021. he was filmed shoving a walker around with disdain in a documentary released last year.
For more than 60 years, the name Pelé has been synonymous with soccer. He played in four World Cups and is the only player to win three and he has a remarkable goal- scoring record.
The foreigners from all over the world found a way to say the magic word “pelé”, which was different from Portuguese.
The home of Pele’s former football club, the Urbano Caldeira Stadium, is where the wake will take place for 24 hours.
Pelé was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in Três Corações – an inland city roughly 155 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro – in 1940, before his family moved to the city of Bauru in São Paulo.
The footballer is unsure of the origin of the nickname Pelé. He once wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian that it likely started with school classmates teasing him for mangling the nickname of another player, Bilé. Whatever the origin, the moniker stuck.
He started playing soccer with a ball and his socks and rags were rolled up, a humble beginning for someone who would grow into a successful career.
He was a famous person in Minas Gerais. I was a role model for him. I always wanted to be like him, but what happened, to this day, only God can explain.”
In 2016 he told CNN about how everyone knew about Brazil when they won the World Cup. “I think this was the most important thing I gave to my country because we were well known after that World Cup.”
Another World Cup victory came in 1962, although an injury sidelined Pelé for the tournament’s later stages. He was hurt in 1966 and Brazil exited the competition after the group stage, but redemption came in 1970.
Carlos Alberto, the Brazilian co-captain, said Pel was saying that his team was going to win the World Cup.
Brazil scored the World Cup goal of the year in the final against Italy, a sweeping, length-of-the-pitch move involving nine of the team’s 10 outfield players.
There was a ball that went into the bottom corner of the net. Brazil’s mantra of jogo bonito (the beautiful game) has never been better encapsulated.
“Before the match, I told myself that Pelé was just flesh and bones like the rest of us,” Italian defender Tarcisio Burgnich said after his side’s defeat in the final. I realized I had been wrong.
The tournament capped Pelé’s World Cup career but not his time in the spotlight. In 1975, he signed a contract with the New York Cosmos that was worth $1.67 million a year.
The league didn’t last because of its draw of Giorgio Chinaglia and Franz Beckenbauer. Around the world, Pelé retained his influence.
He was in the public eye through endorsement deals and as an advocate for the poor in Brazil. He worked for many years as an ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund.
“This debate about the player of the century is absurd,” said Zico, who represented Brazil in the decade after Pelé’s retirement. Pelé is the only possible answer. He is the best player of all time, and I might add.
Exactly how many goals Pelé scored during his career is unclear, and his Guinness World Records tally has come under scrutiny with many scored in unofficial matches.
A golden age of Brazilian sports journalism: The tale of Pelé and his first World Cup goal versus Sweden, according to his biographer Andrew Downie
“If I pass away one day, I am happy because I tried to do my best,” he told The Talks online magazine. It was the biggest sport in the world that allowed me to do so much.
Pelé said in an interview to CNN that he tried to follow a lesson from his father: “If you be focused, if you have good health — nobody’s gonna stop you.”
In the tournament’s final game against Sweden, he flicked the ball high over his defender’s head and smashed it into the net. He is the youngest player to score in a World Cup at 17 years old. Brazil’s economy was booming and the team’s exuberance became a symbol of the country.
Vinicius said that Pelé was the best of Brazil because its people, working class and people were all there. “Pelé gives a sense of identity to the Brazilian people.”
He added martial arts to the workouts at the gym. Pel’s teammate, Menglvio Figueir, said most players are not concerned about physical conditioning but Pel ran to the front of the line to do laps around the field.
As he began to rack up wins for Santos alongside a powerful attacking squad, Pelé’s career also coincided with a golden age of Brazilian sportswriting, according to journalist Andrew Downie. The brothers Nelson Rodrigues and Mario Filho, known also for playwriting and political journalism, relished covering soccer matches, especially Pelé’s, with “beautiful and acerbic wit,” says Downie. “People would buy the newspaper to see what they were saying” and pack stadiums to see what would happen next.
One Pelé goal that blew past six defenders and inspired a near-two-minute standing ovation in Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã stadium moved a sportswriter not only to recount it in newsprint, but also to arrange for a commemorative plaque to be affixed to the sporting arena, birthing a Brazilian expression for any gorgeously executed feat: “plaque-worthy goal.”
Even as he promoted the idea of soccer as a unifying force, he was involved in racial and political differences at home. According to his biographer, after Brazil lost in the 1950 World Cup with a Black goalkeeper, there was a racist narrative that Black soccer players were unreliable.
Today’s Brazilians are starting to judge athletes based on their political actions. “We are slowly beginning to understand that it’s not only soccer. That soccer is not separated from our society, from our life.”
As a boy, Tavares and his cousins listened to Pelé’s World Cup games on the radio. His performance made them think of a game they had never seen, and so they started playing with socks and string.
Lucia Cunha was a girl when she was listening to Pel’s World Cup exploits. She read about him in the paper.
In Santos, Nicolas Oliveira, 18, was outside the stadium along with about 200 other people. Oliveira said that even replays of Pelé’s sensational playing make him swell with emotion.
The lawyer, named Everton Luz, was crying near the hospital with a Santos club flag wrapped around him. He came straight from work to pay tribute to his father’s favorite player, who had made him a better man and inspired decades of stories.
Fans had already started lining the streets in the early hours of Monday morning, many holding flags or banners with messages for ‘O Rei’ (“The King”). You are eternal, read the sign by the side of the road.
Tributes have poured in from sports stars, politicians and musicians from all around the world for a man that transcended his sport and became a global icon.
The event’s wake was interrupted by a rioting police officer in the central limit of the Euclidean prisoner’s law
The police were reinforced to accommodate the presence of the Brazilian president at the wake.