I AM not much of a football fan, yet I have heard a lot about Pele, the unrivalled goal scorer of all times: at the end of his professional career he had totaled a mere 1,280 goals. The recent release of his autobiography is an opportunity to discover the person behind the persona.
I have always wondered why Edson Arantes do Nascimiento became known as Pele.
Incidentally, Pele is not his only nickname, his uncle called him ‘Dico’ and that’s what his close family calls him.
The nickname Pele is based on Bile, the goalie from the Sao Lourenco club who played with his father, Dondinho.
At the age of three or four, Edson said he wanted to become a goalkeeper like ‘Pile’, the distorted name eventually turned into ‘Pele’. “And then one boy, I don’t remember who, started to tease me by calling me ‘Pele’. So thanks to that goalie Bile, and a classmate’s little joke, I became Pele.”
Throughout the book, Pele acknowledges, he owes everything he has to football and for most of his life, football was all he had, especially during his childhood.
He did not enjoy studying and was often punished by being made to kneel on a pile of dried beans, hard as little stones, “maybe that helped me to strengthen my knees for the work they had ahead “ he says with a great sense of humor.
Pele did not even have a ball to play with and was compelled to make one by stuffing paper or rags into a sock or stocking and then tying it with string.
He played in the streets with goalposts of old shoes and learned how to control the ball, making it go the way he wanted it to, at the speed he wanted it to. A ball made of socks!
Pele acknowledges that many of his unique skills were acquired during his childhood football games. As a young boy, he scored lots of bicycle kicks which other kids found difficult.
Moreover, Pele had the talent not only to run well with the ball but also to receive the ball: “I definitely had an ability to anticipate what was going to happen, slightly before everyone else. Even after I became a professional, people would say ‘How did you see that coming’ ...I cannot remember in three decades of playing football that anyone ever robbed me of the ball by coming at me from behind...Maybe I developed it because in those days there would be loads of us playing in very small places, so you had to be really quick.”
Pele signed his first contract with a local football team in 1954. He was fourteen years old and was also due to repeat his third year at school for poor grades and mostly for missing classes.
He eventually managed to finish primary school two years late. His luck changed for the best when he was asked to join the Santos Football Club; from then on he wore the famous number 10 shirt. His global fame began at the 1958 World Cup held in Sweden and people started calling him: King Pele.
Pele, incidentally, was almost not selected for the 1958 World Cup. The Brazilian national team’s psychologist, Dr. Joao Carvalhes, had concluded in a report that Pele was infantile and lacked the necessary fighting spirit but Feola, responsible for making the final selection of players, told Dr. Joao: “You may be right. The thing is, you don’t know anything about football”.
Pele was 17 years old when he played his first World Cup Football Match. Brazil won the trophy that year and the whole world fell in love with Brazilian football which Pele described as “based on ball-control, on delicate touches, with passes driving the team up-field, creating an attacking style of play that was extremely effective and attractive to watch.”
He participated in three more World Cups with Brazil winning again in 1962 and 1970. Despite his fame, Pele did not change, his character remained the same and he admits, he never enjoyed showing off his wealth.
He faced his greatest challenge when he decided to retire from football.
Heeding his father’s advice, he wanted to stop while at his best. He quit ‘the beautiful game’ gradually. In 1970, he declared he would no longer be available for national selections.
At the same time, Pele was determined to fill the gaps in his education while still playing for the Santos Football Club. He successfully received a secondary diploma, passed the Preparatory exam in order to attend University and after three years of intense studying, he was finally awarded a degree in Physical Education.
“It was tough going...Lessons began at 7.30 in the morning, and there was really no let-up. The professors had no interest in the fact that I was playing professional football in the evenings, I still had to keep up with the rest of the class,” writes Pele.
After quitting playing for his Brazilian club in 1974, Pele signed a two-year contract with Cosmos, an American club based in New York. His farewell match took place on 1 October 1977 at the Giants Stadium packed with 75,000 fans: he played one half for his beloved Santos Club and the other for Cosmos.
Pele was often criticized for leaving the national Brazilian team so soon and he later envied the exceptional stamina of Cameroon’s thirty-eight year-old veteran striker, Roger Mila, during the 1990 World Cup.
Mila, incidentally, participated again in the World Cup Finals of USA in 1994. However, once Pele quit the game, he never looked back.
His ventures into private business were not all profitable and with his usual sense of humor, Pele acknowledges that he was much more successful at playing football.
He joined FIFA’s Fair Play board and became soon after a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.
He went on to become Minister of Sports in 1994. During his tenure, he worked on a Bill which bears his name, aimed at clarifying players’ rights.
Pele also plays the guitar and composes songs which have been performed by some of Brazil’s greatest artists like Sergio Mendes and Gilberto Gil and he hopes to release a CD one day with all his songs.
What is most surprising is not so much what Pele achieved during and after his football career but the fact that most of his fans today have never seen him play! More than thirty years after he quit football, Pele embodies the ‘beautiful game’ at its best.
Bobby Charlton whose team won the World Cup in 1966 said that he sometimes felt that “the game of football was invented for this magical player.”
This fascinating autobiography will not disappoint football fans and it is a must read for anyone interested in extraordinary stories.
