“Pelé will remain the standard measure of football”

Of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known as Pelé, who died on December 29, there will still be talk at length. There is his work as a footballer, but also what he was like as a man in front of a celebrity who often surpassed him. Stéphane Cohen, who dedicates his latest book (1) to the Brazilian genius, tells us more.

He explains that because of his poor childhood, Pele was always afraid of missing out. How did it manifest itself?

It is a behavior he has maintained throughout his life. There was a perpetual lack in him. To him, a penny was a penny. Whoever spends generously accumulates generously. One contract added to another every time. There was always room for paid interventions. Pele has never been in the measure. He has dedicated a lot of his life to accumulating collaborations. His relationship with money was unhealthy. When he signed a contract worth several hundred thousand dollars with the Puma brand in 1970, he didn’t need the money.

We just have the feeling that he had a complicated relationship with money. Precursor in the game, wasn’t he also in the management of his career?

There was nothing ostentatious about him as it can be today. Of all the properties he managed to acquire, he didn’t talk about them and they were often oriented towards his family. On the contrary, he tended to hide. Unlike our times when everything transpires on social media, these things weren’t seen in his time.

Have other athletes had such media notoriety in this period?

No, I don’t think so, or maybe American athletes, but it was all over the country. We must not forget that we are at the dawn of ultra-mediated sport. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the first sports stars were born: in Formula 1, skiing, football or tennis. Somewhere, Pele remains the forerunner of it all. Before him there was nothing. In addition to his undeniable talent, Pele owes much to the arrival of television in sport. This allowed the athlete to be brought into homes and made famous. Others would have deserved it before him. I think of a Brazilian player called Leônidas, who was so talented. But, here, he was born at a time when media coverage didn’t exist. Brilliant as he was, Pelé benefited from an ultra favorable environment, which made him the king of football. Pelé remained the standard size of the round ball, the calibre.

It was, throughout his career, an advertising sign. How did he experience it?

I think he experienced it with distance. Aside from this commando operation by Puma – who arrives at his home to personally offer him this wonderful contract with a suitcase of cash, when he doesn’t have a personal contract, and his teammates do – Pelé signed without looking this offered to him by his pseudo advisers. he. He has never done live stuff. It was only after his second failure, for which he is not responsible, that he took matters into his own hands. He surrounded himself with competent people and, from there, decided the price of his interventions. This is how he became, without a doubt, the richest retired sportsman in the world.

There is something else very interesting about Pele: this obsession with his stats, like many players today.

It was especially at the end of his life that he was very responsible for the goals he was able to score. I know he’s been lost in ridiculous wars, even with Cristiano Ronaldo when he officially broke his own record. Pele was worth even more. Beyond his goals, there is all the immaterial side that Pelé transmits. All those songs, all those poems that have been written about him. There are all these tributes from great writers who saw him play and said he was one of the greatest in their life. Who else has experienced this? When we see that after the 1970 World Cup he received over thirty minutes of tribute from the Brazilian Parliament, this is not obvious!

We come precisely to his relationship with the political world, far from clear. He was much criticized for his lack of standing under the dictatorship…

I don’t think there was a single player in this period who could have stood up to successive military juntas without fearing for his life. He pelé perhaps less than the others, because he was untouchable, but he isn’t even sure. Today we know that he was under surveillance, that a file had been opened to find out if he had communist sympathies. He appeared before a commission of inquiry. Those who criticized him, such as Paulo César – who was part of Seleçao 70 – did not refuse the gifts given to them in the past by state or private companies. Recall that the entire Brazilian team was in Brasilia after the 1970 World Cup final, to deliver the cup to the dictator Medici. Not just Pele! The words of Paulo César and others helped make him an accomplice to the dictatorship, when he had no sympathy for it.

Wasn’t the fact that you accepted this position as Minister of Sports years later a way to erase this negative image with the Brazilians?

In my opinion the fact that he accepted this assignment is not linked to his personal image, but rather to the idea of ​​giving to the poor young people of his country, especially in the favelas, what he didn’t have he didn’t have. Childhood, always childhood… For these young people he created small soccer fields, but with the obligation that they could go to school and attend it regularly. It’s one of the best things he’s done! Unfortunately, the credits have gradually been cut. For the rest, he tried to clean up the Brazilian professional football, plagued by corruption, and whose great organizer was Joao Havelange. Without much result.