Seventy crowns for King Pele

By Ifeanyi Ibeh

October 24, 2010 12:55AM

Literally translated, the Portuguese term ‘O Rei' stands for ‘the king' and that is exactly what Pele, who turned 70 yesterday, is to football.

Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento on October 23, 1940 in Tres Coracoes, in the state of Minas Gerais, Pele had football in his veins as his father, known as Dondinho, was a talented footballer whose career was cut short by a knee injury; a situation that had a hand in carving the destiny of the young Pele.

"During the periods when my dad was sidelined from football through injury," Pele wrote in his autobiography, "the family really struggled. [My siblings] and I were always barefoot and wore only castoff clothes. The house was small and overcrowded with a leaky roof.

"With no regular source of income, I remember that on several occasions the only meal my mum had for us was bread with a slice of banana. We never went without food - like many people worse off than us in Brazil - but for my mother it was a life governed by fear, a fear of not being able to provide. And one of the things I have learned is that fear of life is fear of the worst kind."

With his father's bitter experience, it was always going to be difficult for Pele's mother to allow Pele to take to professional football as all it needed to end the career of even the most gifted of footballers was one bad tackle.

Pele however overcame his mother's resistance and after his family moved to the city of Bauru, in the state of Sao Paulo, he joined local side Bauru Atletico Club and at the age of 15 played his first matches for the side where he got the now famous nickname, Pele.

Legend in the making

Months after joining Bauru, he caught the eye of top Brazilian outfit Santos, where he rose to become the biggest name on the planet as he led Santos to 10 Sao Paulo state tournaments, five Brazilian Cups, two Copa Libertadores titles and two Intercontinental Cups.

Pele scored four goals on his league debut for Santos in a match against Corinthians on September 7, 1956 and nine months later, scored his first hat-trick in a game against Lavras and went on to score three or more goals a staggering 129 times during his career including an incredible eight goals on November 21, 1964 as Santos recorded a monumental 11-0 victory over rivals Botafogo.

By the middle of 1958, still a couple of months shy of his 18th birthday, Pele was on his way to Sweden for the FIFA World Cup where he grabbed his first World Cup finals goal in a 1-0 quarter final win over Wales before going on to score two goals in Brazil's 5-2 win over the hosts in the final.

That feat made Pele the youngest ever winner of the World Cup and he went on to win two more in 1962 (in Chile) and in 1970 (in Mexico) - where he inspired Brazil to a 4-1 win over Italy scoring the game's opening goal and created the last. Pele's header against Italy in that memorable final was Brazil's 100th World Cup goal.

However, a few months before the World Cup in Mexico, on November 19, 1969, Pele scored his 1000th career goal in a league game for Santos with the goal arriving from a penalty, which, for someone who once said that "a penalty is a cowardly way to score", was quite ironic.

Hundreds of spectators, and even pressmen, raced onto the pitch to mob the Brazilian star and it took over thirty minutes for the game to resume. But the day, 19th November, subsequently became known as ‘Pele Day' to celebrate the anniversary of his 1,000th goal.

On July 18, 1971, Pele played his last international game for Brazil in a 2-2 draw with Yugoslavia although he came out of retirement to feature one last time in the gold and blue of Brazil in a 1976 friendly against local club side Flamengo.

Football ambassador

1976 was also the year Pele moved to the United States to play for the New York Cosmos where he helped promote the sport in the lucrative U.S. market.

When Pele played for the New York Cosmos so many of his opponents wanted to swap shirts with him that the club had to give each of their opponents a shirt after every match.

"Pele was the main attraction," said Gordon Bradley, one of the club's coaches at the time.

"Sometimes we had to take 25 or 30 shirts with us to a match - otherwise, we'd never have got out of the stadium alive."

Age was however beginning to catch up with the ‘Black Pearl' and on October 1, 1977, ten years after leading his beloved Santos to a Nigeria that was experiencing a bloody civil war (a 48-hour ceasefire was declared by the government as a result of Pele's presence), Pele played his last game as a footballer as Santos played New York Cosmos at the Giants Stadium in New York.

He played the first half of the game for the American club, and the second half for Santos.

Maradona and Pele

The period of his retirement marked the beginning of the career of another prodigiously talented footballer who would go on to become one of the greatest players the world has ever seen - Diego Maradona.

A decade later, Pele was no longer the undisputed king of world football as a new generation of football fans (and writers) preferred the pint-sized Argentine who almost single-handedly won the World Cup for Argentina in 1986, also in Mexico.

Pele, nevertheless regards himself as the best player ever, out rightly rejecting any comparison with Maradona.

"When I go to Argentina I tell them: discuss first who is the best in Argentina, and then we will see who is the best in the world," he said in a recent interview, in which he recalled that the legendary Alfredo Di Stefano was for many years regarded as the best Argentine player ever.