The Emperor of Football, a Star Without Comparison

Pele is, and will remain, the greatest ever footballer to his millions of fans.

New Delhi: One could safely say that Indian football saw one of its biggest days in 1977, when Pele landed in Kolkata (then Calcutta) to play an exhibition match against local glamour outfit, Mohun Bagan. One’s recollections of the Bengali language newspapers, for a long time before the arrival of Pele, were those of graphics of how he might play, with arrows and curves, slides and graphics trying, with limited success, to catch the genius of the man.

The match, on September 25, wasn’t really of any great quality but that was irrelevant. The masses had thronged to the Eden Gardens to see the genius at work and a couple of shuffles of those magic feet were enough to enrapture the crowd.
Some players are world citizens. In football, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, later to be nicknamed and known eternally as Pele, was the first of these superstars.

Born on October 23, 1940 in Tres Coracoes, Minas Gerais, Pele came from a very humble background, as is the case with most Brazilian players, Pele’s early life wasn’t easy. But amidst all the hardship, football came to him naturally and it wasn’t a surprise that he was on the player list of Brazilian club Santos by the time he was 15.

Football was alien to Pele’s family. His father Joao Ramos do Nascimento (known as Dondinho) was a player for the Fluminense club, so his encouragement was always big for his prodigious son.

Pele’s rise was phenomenal. Football’s first superstar went on to play four World Cups (1958, 1972, 1966 and 1970) and is the only man having been part of three champion sides, in ’58, ’62 and ’70.

A total of 77 goals from 92 matches for Brazil were supplemented by an amazing 618 goals from 634 appearances for Santos (1956-74) and thereafter 37 more scores off 64 matches for New York Cosmos, where he spent 1975 to 1977.

Such was Pele’s demand in Santos and Brazil that the man never was released to play in Europe, where all the other football superstars have invariably made a mark.

That in itself shows how much of a sensation he was, playing out of Latin America alone to conquer the world for the best part of his career.
It was in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden that the world first came to know of this young man as he scored a hat-trick against France in the semi-final, the youngest player ever to get one at this level and then he was on point to score twice in the final against the hosts, ending the tournament with six goals.

From there, it was always on the way up, though the 1966 World Cup ended quite badly for him, as he was felled by a brutal foul in a match with Portugal as Brazil were eliminated in the first round. Pele vowed to never play World Cup football again, but later relented.

The year 1970 edition saw Brazil run away with the Jules Rimet Trophy with Pele once again in the thick of things. He played his last international match a year later.

A brilliant career, which is punctuated by 1279 goals from 1363 matches is what made Pele immortal. He is, and will remain, the greatest ever footballer to his millions of fans. For them, it never ever got any better than Pele.