The greatest football player in history has passed away at the age of 82. He forever marked the history of the most popular sport on the planet.
Football has just lost its most illustrious ambassador, its totem and one of its greatest references. Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known as Pelé, died at the age of 82 following cancer, and it’s everyone in football who is an orphan, because he was often presented as the best player Of the history.
For weeks, his state of health had become worrying and his family had gathered around him as Brazilians braced for the sad news.
He is already the only one to have won three World Cups (1958, 1962 and 1970). He also participated in the first hours of glory of Brazilian football, those which still contribute to the sporting legend of this country today. It is therefore no coincidence that he was also named athlete of the century in 1999 by the International Olympic Committee. He won his first World Cup when he was only 17 years old and put on the panoply of a young prodigy thanks in particular to a sumptuous goal scored against the French team in the semi-finals (5-2).
But the 1970 World Cup remains forever its most glorious moment. That year, at the age of 29, he was in full possession of his faculties and put on his conductor’s costume to guide one of the finest teams that football has offered us. This Mexican World Cup being the first to be broadcast live and in color, the prowess of Pelé remains well anchored in the collective imagination. He also owes his title of best player in history to this unprecedented media exposure and relegates to the background the previous glories of international football such as Alfredo Di Stéfano.
Legend actions
His failed actions contributed to nourish his legend, but also to considerably embellish the careers of his opponents. For the 1970 quarter-final, it gave English goalkeeper Gordon Banks the opportunity to make the save of the century with a seemingly unstoppable header that hit the ground before going level with the upright, but the goalkeeper pulled out a unthinkable dive to deflect the ball at the last moment.
The Santos FC epic
The Auriverde jersey (97 goals in 91 caps) will not be the only stuff to contribute to the legend of Pelé. Under the colors of Santos FC, he led this team to the world pantheon of football. A year before the arrival of the prodigy in 1956, the club had only two titles of regional champion of São Paulo. Under his reign, the club won the national championship five times between 1961 and 1965, two Copas Libertadores (the South American version of the Champions Cup) and two Intercontinental Cups in 1962 and 1963. After the departure of the Brazilian number ten, the Santos FC is ranked the 5th greatest team of the 20th century by Fifa.
If Pelé is considered the greatest of all, he also owes it to his propensity not to have missed his crucial appointments, unlike Johan Cruijff (finalist of the World Cup in 1974) and not to have been too stunned by celebrity, such as Diego Maradona (suspended for cocaine use). It is the symbol of sporting rationality. His talent is at the service of the show, but it is also his best weapon to win. He is not a purist of the game like his Dutch counterpart proud to have lost against the FRG because his team from the Netherlands had still made an impression. He is a winner who reasons with quantified objectives, such as exceeding 1,000 goals scored (1,281 in total in 1,363 games over 21 years of career).
Father’s Revenge
Pelé therefore in no way embodies the Dionysian and carnivalesque side of Brazil, that of alcohol and excess, but the Apollonian side linked to the cult and care of the body. Born in June 1940, the son of an amateur footballer, he grew up in Três Corações, in the state of Minas Gerais, north of Rio de Janeiro. Victim of a serious injury, his father had failed at the start of a great career. Consequently, the young Edson Arantes do Nascimento does not consider football as a hobby, but as a profession. He adopted this non-hedonic vision of the round ball from the age of 15 when he arrived at Santos FC and was accommodated in the Concentraç?o, the hotel which serves as support for the greening of the players. pros. He leads a monastic life there and is extremely concerned about his body. Moreover, Pelé is not a colossus with the physique of Hulk. When he was a player, he was 1.72 m tall for 75 kilos and wore a size 39. But his anatomy was harmonious and well proportioned, sufficient to allow him to become a player of planetary level and to delight us with goals or actions of anthology.
Revenge on life and success through the prism of the failure of the father, all the ingredients of the success story are united. He is not a Racinian hero like Garrincha, defeated by his demons. He is a Hollywood character who goes through with his happy ending. Pelé sends a message to the elites that hard work and self-sacrifice pay off. He is then an ideal example not to despair the working classes who have missed the train of economic prosperity. It is a hagiography of the “little black man” which overcomes racist prejudices and social barriers, without the protesting verve of Muhammad Ali, which reassures advertisers. He is the ultimate proof of the universality of sport, a watered down version of negritude, of its tropicalism, of its Third Worldism. It does not oppose blacks to the establishment and does not follow a communitarian logic.
Premier Black Sports Minister
No, Pelé’s leitmotif is to play on the ground of the White Class, within a Brazilian society where the elite has white skin. He was one of the first blacks, in 1974, to sign an advertising contract with Pepsi-Cola. He became Minister of Sports from 1995 to 1998: never had a person of color exercised such a high responsibility until then. He is no longer an Afro-Brazilian from the favelas, he is now a notable, invited to social events. The football fairy made it change color.
His notoriety even allowed him to share the star on the big screen with Sylvester Stallone in the film Victory is ours (1981) and to enjoy a walkabout with the American public of the Cosmos club in New York, the last club of her career. A challenge more mercantile than sporting for this footballer, certainly, extraordinary, but who had his hours of glory behind him.
Example of conversion
In his own way, Pelé went beyond football to transgress the social and racial codes of Brazil. But he did not become a docile servant of power. As minister, he opposed the dictates of Brazilian football embodied by white elites and led by former Fifa president João Havelange over reform on club financial transparency and the fight against corruption. .
His post-career is also a revolution. He is the first retired athlete to obtain an important role with the UN and Fifa to carry out humanitarian actions. Drug prevention messages, fair play commission, Unesco Telethon for children in difficulty and even participation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he will have been an example of retraining for future glories like the Brazilian Ronaldo or Zinedine Zidane by using his notoriety for noble causes. A footballing legend of yesteryear and an inspiration to players in the 21st century, his legacy is immense.
Point
