Football grew to its current dimensions with the help of Pelé, writes Janne Palomäki.
Pelé was the first global superstar in sports history. IL ARCHIVE
The child had learned from his father that men don’t cry.
It’s easy to imagine nine-year-old Edson’s shock when he saw how Brazil’s shock defeat at home in 1950 upset his father.
– Don’t worry, father. I’ll win you the world championship, the child comforted.
Just eight years later, Edson had received a new nickname. The 17-year-old Pelé scored the only goal in the quarter-final against Wales, scored a hat-trick in the semi-final in France and stood on the shoulders of his teammates after completing two goals in the final match that decided Brazil’s first World Cup.
Father Dondinho Arantes cried again. This time her tears spoke of happiness.
Pelé came to the World Cup in Sweden in 1958 as a completely unknown teenager.
He left there as the sport’s first global superstar.
It is largely thanks to Pelé that countries like Qatar are competing for the rights to organize football matches. The growth of football to its current proportions goes back to the technical revolution of the 1960s.
In the summer of 1969, the entire planet stopped to watch Neil Armstrong take a “giant leap for mankind” by jumping onto the surface of the Moon.
Just 12 months later, millions saw how Pelé defied gravity, hanging in the air for a split second before heading Rivelino’s cross into the Italian net. The 1970 World Cup tournament in Mexico was the first to be broadcast live around the world.
Finland also watched how the yellow-shirted O Canarinho captured the Jules Rimet trophy for the third and last time.
However, Europe was largely left out of Pelé’s greatness. In the World Cup, he never reached the level of the club team Santos’ performances.
Brazil’s ten was kicked off the field in the 1962 tournament in Chile where he would likely have been at the peak of his career. In the fall of the same year, Santos played as a representative of his continent against Benfica, who won the European Cup.
The story continues after the picture
Pelé and Bobby Moore can now continue the playoffs on the edge of a cloud. PDO
In the second part, the people from Lisbon couldn’t catch Pelé even to beat him. Santos ran away to the championship with a total of 8–4. Pelé finished with five.
With a nickname The appeal of the combination known as Os Santasticos was so greatthat when the team visited Lagos in early 1969, the Nigerian authorities promised a ceasefire in the civil war against Biafra.
Pelé’s merits are not limited to the globalization of football.
He came back from football retirement to cool off for a couple of years with the New York Cosmos. The futs boom that followed was well illustrated by the fact that the schools in the surrounding area were queuing up to watch the team’s training.
The rise of the United States to the world leader in women’s soccer had begun.
In the middle of it all was a poor boy from the small rural town of Três Corações. It’s confusing to think that slavery had been abolished in Brazil only 52 years before Birth of Edson Arantes do Nascimento.
82 years later, Pelé left behind a much better world.
– I read somewhere that 10 was just a number before Pele. I would say that football is just a sport before him, Neymar summed up the thoughts of millions.