Colossus of football
FOR six decades, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, was called simply the ‘king’. The only footballer to win three World Cup crowns, he was the global face of the sport. He was the one man who embodied the delightful and wondrous Brazilian style of play — he termed it ‘o jogo bonito’, or ‘the beautiful game’ — which prized inventive and uninterrupted attack, underpinned by skilful ball control and precision in passing… and rare joie de vivre. The acme of the Brazilian method was seen at the 1970 World Cup, in which the irresistible waves of attacks by yellow-shirted, supremely talented men from South America took the watcher’s breath away. It was the first World Cup that was televised live globally, that too in colour, and thereafter yellow became the colour of beauty, Brazil the non-partisan’s favourite team.
Brazil won the World Cup for the first time in 1958 when Pelé, just 17, made an impact the like of which has never been seen again — he scored six goals in the final three games, including a hat-trick in the semifinal and two in the final. He won a second World Cup medal in 1962, when he figured in two matches before being ruled out of the tournament due to an injury. He could well have won the third medal in 1966, but cynical attacks on his knees by opposition defenders left him hobbling. Embittered, he announced his retirement from international football. But in 1970, having changed his mind, he led possibly the most talented set of footballers to the greatest glory in the sport. Pelé later caused a football craze in the USA when he played for New York Cosmos for three years.
Pelé’s is the quintessential rags-to-riches story, peculiar to football — the field was his escape, on which he felt, as a journalist wrote in 1958, like a ‘king’. He was merely 5ft 8in tall, but strong and incredibly athletic. Playing with gear that would be clunky by modern standards, and not benefiting from the sports science of our times, he did everything that the modern footballer does — sprint, leap, feint, dodge, score — with perhaps greater grace, and definitely with greater gaiety.
