12/30/2022
On at 05:07
TEC
The three-time world champion was the dream of the Barça board for years
Barça came to negotiate his transfer between 1965 and 1966
Pelé is, if not the best, then one of the best players in the history of football.. However, the great doubt that will remain around his figure is what would have happened to his career if he had decided to make the leap to Europe.
‘O Rei’, the brilliant star of the three-time world champion Brazil team, he did not leave his country to play for a club other than Santos until the end of his careerwhen he signed in 1975 for the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League to put an end to his days as a soccer player.
BARÇA OPTION
Years ago, the great teams of the Old Continent sighed to see the quality of Pelé in their stadiums, something that Barça considered very strongly in the Enric Llaudet stage as president of the Barcelona entity.
As stated by himself in an interview with MARCA on December 17, 1966Barça negotiated to bring the Brazilian star to the Camp Nou: “We entered into negotiations with the man who had an exclusive put option on Peléthe Italian Gerardo Sannella & rdquor ;, explained Llaudet.
“On November 14, 1965, the negotiations began and on February 23, 1966, our friend Sannella told us that Signing Pelé would cost a million dollars in transfer for Santos and two hundred thousand dollars for him. It was very clear that Pelé could not be bought and that Santos simply put him on the market at a prohibitive price.”
Finally, that same year, Barça signed Walter Machado Da Silva, who did not play any official match due to the Franco regime’s ban on registering foreign players.
To give you an idea, Da Silva cost 10,800,000 million pesetas. Pelé, in exchange, cost seventeen times more: 187,000,000 million.