How Brazil legend Pele, the most divine of footballers, learned to play with a sock stuffed with paper
IN brilliant, Brazilian yellow on new-fangled colour TV sets, Pele appeared to have descended from footballing heaven.
It was the 1970 World Cup and with balletic poise, devastating pace and clinical skill he defined what the Beautiful Game could be.
For Pelé, it was never enough just to win, he had to entertain too.
It’s all there on YouTube – the mazy dribbles, the cannonball shots and that elegant dummy sold to Uruguay’s keeper.
He learned to play football with a sock stuffed with newspaper after being born into poverty
Aged 17, he then became a global superstar after helping Brazil lift its first World Cup in 1958.
Now – in the searing heat of Mexico 1970 – Pele was in his pomp, playing for a team regarded by many as the greatest ever.
Brazil’s second match saw them face holders England, with temperatures nudging 37C in Guadalajara.
On ten minutes, Jairzinho crossed for Pelé whose powerful downward header was miraculously palmed away by Gordon Banks.
The greatest-ever player thwarted by the greatest-ever save.
Pele would later reflect: “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.”
Brazil won 1-0 despite an imperious defensive display by Bobby Moore, including an epic tackle on Jairzinho in the box.
Brazil manager Mário Zagallo said: “The England match was our toughest test. That was the real final.”
At the final whistle, Pele and Moore embraced like two battered prize fighters and swapped shirts.
Pelé would later say: “He was my friend as well as the greatest defender I ever played against.
In the final Brazil hammered Italy 4-1. Tarcisio Burgnich, who marked Pele, recalled: “I told myself before the game, ‘He’s made of skin and bones just like everyone else’.
“But I was wrong.”
Pele opened the scoring with a sublime header and his unforgettable killer pass to a rampaging Alberto capped off the victory.
Alberto would later say: “Playing with Pele felt like you had God on your side.”
He was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento – in subtropical Três Corações in 1940.
He was named after US inventor Thomas Edison because his town had just been connected to the electricity mains.
The eldest of three children, his father João Ramos do Nascimento, was a footballer whose career was cut short by injury, plunging the family into poverty.
He later recalled the “constant anxiety” of where his next meal would come from.
Pele wrote: “That fear, once it enters your bones, it’s like a chill that never leaves you.”
He played football in the street with a sock stuffed with newspaper or a watermelon.
Later his father would teach him how to use both feet and to head properly.
Like all Brazilian footballers, there had to be a nickname.
As a child, his favourite player was goalkeeper Bilé who he mispronounced as Pele. It stuck.
Scouted by giants Santos FC, he scored on his debut aged 15 in 1956.
The following year he was called up for the national team – scoring in a 2–1 loss to Argentina
In 1958 Pele inspired Brazil to World Cup glory in Sweden with six goals. Some locals had never met a black man.
He recalled: “This Swedish girl kept rubbing my skin to see if it’d come off.”
In the 1962 World Cup he scored in the opening game but later limped out of the tournament, which Brazil won.
Four years later in England he was fouled repeatedly and got injured again.
A year after the 1970 triumph he retired from internationals as the original GOAT, greatest of all time.
He would win six league titles with Santos plus two Copa Libertadores – the equivalent of the Champions League.
In 1975 he joined New York Cosmos before hanging up his boots two years later.
Mick Jagger said: “Everybody wanted to shake his hand, to get a photo with him.
“Saying you had partied with Pele was the biggest badge of honour going.”
His personal life was complicated.
Pele said he was “too young” when he married Rosemeri dos Reis Cholbi in 1966.
The couple had daughters, Kelly and Jennifer, and son Edinho, before divorce in 1982.
In total, he has seven known offspring, including Sandra Machado who he refused to acknowledge.
Sandra, who died from cancer in 2006, was the result of a romance with housemaid Anisia Machado.
An affair in 1968 with journalist Lenita Kurtz produced daughter Flavia, 52.
In 1994 he married psychologist Assíria Lemos Seixas, who gave birth to twins Joshua and Celeste in 1996. The couple divorced in 2008.
Then in 2016, aged 75, he married “definitive love” businesswoman Marcia Cibele Aoki, 50.
After he quit playing, Pele became a UNESCO Ambassador and later Brazilian Sports Minister and also earned a fortune through ad deals – including Viagra.
He had long been dogged by health problems and last year had surgery to remove a tumour from his colon.
But he was immortalised in canvas by pop artist Andy Warhol, who said “Pele was one of the few who contradicted my theory.
“Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries.”
