A few years ago, the football world mourned the passing of Johan Cruyff. Later – by Diego Maradona. Probably for everyone the scale of the new loss is not yet understood: the king of football, the great Brazilian Pele has passed away.
How did the legend go?
A prominent football player has struggled with cancer in recent years. Unfortunately, not everyone succeeds in winning the fight against cancer, especially when it comes to an elderly person. And Pele, 80, had a successful surgery to remove a tumor in his rectum – unfortunately, that didn’t mean he was cured of the disease. Since then, there have been repeated reports of him being hospitalized. Even after surgery, she took chemotherapy courses.
The disturbing news that Pele’s condition was deteriorating came just before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar: At the end of November, he was hospitalized with generalized swelling, diagnosed with heart failure and later a respiratory infection in the hospital. . The football legend remained conscious and did not stop thanking everyone who cared about his support through social networks.
After the 1/8 final match during the World Cup, Brazil national team players made a poster with his picture. Despite his most severe illness, Pele devotedly followed Selesao’s performances in Qatar. It’s hard to imagine how painful it was for him to accept the team’s relegation after losing in the quarterfinals. Especially if the information is true that his body is not responding to chemotherapy and that he continues to receive only palliative care.
The footballer’s daughters denied these rumors, saying that their famous father had contracted the coronavirus. However, it cannot be ignored that his statements were made only to relieve the public a little bit. And even in such a situation, the great player found the strength to support Neymar, the leader of the Brazilian national team, who after more than 50 years repeated Pele’s record – he scored 77 goals for the national team.
Main milestones in Pele’s career
Can we see the future king of football in a delicate boy who started playing in the children’s team of Tres Coracoins town of Minas Gerais state in 1947? Apparently, yes. Young Edson Arantes do Nascimento, son of football player João Ramos do Nascimento, decided to follow in his father’s footsteps, but it is not known what his fate would have been without Valdemar de Brito, a former Brazilian national team player. A few years later he’s the coach of the kids’ team. It so happened that de Brito, who had a good career in Brazil, did not remain in the memory of millions of fans because of his achievements on the football field: he is remembered as the first professional coach of Pelé.
It was Brito who first predicted that Pelé would become the world’s greatest football player. The specialist organized a screening for the ward in Santos, which the player successfully passed in June 1956, and three months later made his debut for the team in an official match – at the time he was under 16 years old. In March 1957, Pelé received his first call-up to the Brazilian national team. And a year later, already at the age of 18, the player went with the team to the World Cup in Sweden.
It is noteworthy that his first appearance in the starting lineup at the World Cup was in the match with the USSR national team – this was the last match of the group stage, in which the only defeat to the Soviet players at this stage was the Brazilians. 2-0 win. And already in the quarter-finals, Pele scored the winning goal against Wales (1:0). In the semi-finals, Seleção flaunted against the French, winning 5:2, and the youth scored a unique hat-trick. By a similar score, the Brazilians won the final against the Swedes, in which Pelé scored two goals, bringing his team its first world title. Meanwhile, a team from another continent won the World Cup held in Europe for the first time.
Since then, the great Pelé has won the world title two more times – leading the Brazilians to victory in Chile (1962) and Mexico (1970). As such, he remains the only player in history to have won three world titles as a player. In total, he played 92 matches for the Brazilian national team and scored 77 goals, the last of which was in 1971. And only now, in 2022, this record was repeated by Neymar, but not broken.
The club career of the inimitable Brazilian was no less extraordinary. He devoted almost his entire professional career to Santos, but moved to the United States for a short time at the end of his football years, where he briefly played for the New York Cosmos. As part of Santos, he was a six-time Brazilian champion, five-time Cup winner, 10-time winner of the Paulista League (São Paulo state championship), twice lifted the Libertadores Cup over his head and the same number of Intercontinental Cups. In addition, Pele won a unique trophy – the Intercontinental Champions Super Cup, played only twice, in 1968 and 1969.
admission
Pele took on more and more titles over the years after his career ended. Thus, the International Football Federation (FIFA) recognized him as the best football player of the twentieth century. In 2014 he received an honorary FIFA Golden Ball. Additionally, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) named Pele the greatest athlete of the twentieth century – and this is despite the fact that the Brazilian athlete has never competed in the Olympics. The merits of the football king were recognized not only at the sports level – in 1998 he was consecrated as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
The origin of the nickname
There are many versions of why the world knew Edson Arantes as Pele before Nascimento. The football player himself said that a classmate gave him this nickname – by the way, Pele was offended by this.
He decided it was an insult, as the word had no direct meaning in Portuguese. But then I decided that such a nickname is very convenient to write and pronounce in all languages, so I quickly got used to it.
According to another version, classmates called their friends so in honor of Bile, the goalkeeper of his idol Vasco da Gama. It is assumed that this option is also suitable for the football player, since in Hebrew this word means “miracle”. There was also an unpopular version that Pele meant “muff” – but this option was not very close to the truth.