The King of Football has abdicated: Pelé dies in Brazil at 82 years of age
As happens in all disciplines, there is always a genius who elevates them to the category of art, Mozart with music, Cervantes with writing, Da Vinci with painting and sculpture and Edson Arantes Do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, did it in football. With the death of the King we lose the last bastion of the 20th century that made the sport so great. In 2014 Alfredo Di Estéfano died, in 2016 Johan Cruyff, and in 2020 Diego Armando Maradona. O Rei, for many the greatest footballer of all time, has passed away after more than a year of treatment for colon cancer. The former Brazilian footballer, a great reference of the "jogo bonito", spent most of his career with Santos and it was with the national team that he cemented his legend, winning three World Cups, the most in history.
How to sum up such a great career in so little. Pelé made his debut with the 'Canarinha' at the age of 16 and at 17 he was already vital in winning the World Cup title in Sweden in 1958. His arrival, along with that of another young talent like Garrincha, gave birth to an artistic, fluid and dominant game that forever marked the future of football and is still engraved in the collective imagination of the fans. The Carioca player astonished the world with his class, physical power, ball handling and clinical shooting, which he displayed by scoring three goals in the semi-finals against France and another two in the final against the hosts. That tournament began the domination of world football by Pelé, who led Brazil to victory in two more World Cups, 1962 and 1970, the latter known as the greatest World Cup of all time where Brazil assembled the most iconic eleven of all time; the Brazil of the 5 "tens".
After winning every possible title with Santos and the national team and scoring more than a thousand goals in official matches (1,284 goals in 1,363 matches, according to statistics), he announced his retirement from active sport in 1974. However, in 1975 he signed for the New York Cosmos, a team full of football stars that sought to promote football in the United States. Already a legend, after his retirement in 1977, he was a television actor and wanted to become a singer. On 13 January 2014, FIFA awarded him an honorary Ballon d'Or for his great career. He was also named Knight of Honour of the British Empire, UN Citizen of the World, Unesco Ambassador for Education, Science, Culture and Good Wishes, UN Ambassador for Ecology and Environment (1992) and Ambassador for Sport at the World Economic Forum in Davos (2006).
Pelé is God's compensation to our country for not having, until now, a Nobel Prize. Pelé invented the idea of Brazil in the imagination of the whole planet. The footballer was voted Athlete of the Century by the French newspaper L'Équipe in 1980. Andy Warhol, the pop artist who predicted instant glory for 15 seconds for all mortals, said of him: "Pelé will be famous for 15 centuries". "The only one to stop a war," said a banner at Santos' Vila Belmiro stadium from 1969. There are historians who still dispute this impossible and unrepeatable title, but anyone would tell the fans, who chanted at every match: "My Santos is sensational / Only Santos stopped the war / With Rei Pelé Bi (champion) World (Intercontinental) / The best team on earth".
The cash tours for football teams were not invented in this century. Santos did it in 1969 in countries that didn't have the money for the same reasons countries might want to host the World Cup today. First, instead of preventing one war, Pelé prevented two. In 1968, Marian Ngouabi staged a military coup in the Republic of Congo. The country was living in tension between purges on the one hand and attacks on the other, so the dictator came up with the idea of strengthening his image by bringing together the best team in the world.
Survivors of the team still talk about strict security measures. He recalled the "presence of a large number of troops in the streets" and the protection of the army and police during the stay. He also said Santos' commercial director had assured them that Nigeria's civil war would end because of their exhibition game and would not bring trouble to the authorities. Santos played without a fence in front of 25,000 spectators who stood on the sidelines. But the fact remains that armed conflict continues in other parts of the country. And that the war continued for another year after Pelé's departure. "He had not yet turned 20 when the Brazilian government declared him a "national treasure" and banned his export". Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer on Pelé.
The list of historic football personalities who claim that O Rei was the greatest is so long that there is not enough space to name them all. Pelé was so great that not even the Argentinians dispute him. While the love for "El Diego" by the Argentinean people transcends football, the great stars who saw him and were contemporaries of "El Negro" (the nickname by which Pelé is known in Argentina), are full of praise for the Brazilian. Alfio Basile, Messi's former coach with the national team and Maradona's former teammate, who also played against Pelé, gives an account of this: "He had: the best left and right foot I've ever seen, he hit with both, he dribbled with both legs, handsome, bad, when you hit him, he had already broken three or four of your teammates".
Hugo Gatti, ex goalkeeper of the Cosmos with Pelé and one of the emblems of Argentinean football commented "When you talk about football, you have to separate Pelé, he is the most complete player I have ever seen. Perfect is God, as a footballer he was close", "Pelé was the only player who was scary, it was like watching a panther", he added. Franz Beckenbauer, known as the "Kaiser" of football stated that "We can talk about Messi, Maradona, Cruyff, Gerd Müller, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ronaldo Nazario... but Pelé, Pelé was the best of all time".
If there is one thing that characterises a genius, it is his ability to seem like a madman in his time and a great for history. We can write books and more books about O Rei, about what he did that even he could not have imagined. What every child did in the school playground, he did on the playing fields. Raising a discipline to an art form will be his greatest legacy. The most iconic plays and images in history are his, the non-goal against Ladislao Mazurkiewicz, suffering in his own flesh the save of the century by Gordon Banks, the 1000th goal, and so many and many actions that we marvel at now, but that he left as a legacy more than 50 years ago. Football is feeling and passion. Let everyone enjoy more with whoever they want and choose their favourite, and that's it. Let's not give it any more thought. The only thing that is clear is that today the beautiful game has lost its King. Thanks for everything, O Rei.
Coordinator Americas: José Antonio Sierra