![]() ![]() In 1956, while still 15, Pele made the three-hour journey across the Serra do Mar Mountains to the Atlantic seaside city of Santos on the São Paulo coast. At 13, Pele caught the eye of Waldemar de Brito, one of the pioneers of Brazilian football and manager of the Bauru Atletico Clube. At nine, he dropped out of school and began to dream of playing football professionally, with the help of and coaching from his father. Pele was six when the family moved to Bauru, a city in São Paulo, where his father was a centre-forward with a minor league club. Now it is known across the world, and I do not mind it so much.” So, thanks to that goalie Bilé, and a classmate’s little joke, I became Pele. And then one boy, I don’t remember who, started to tease me by calling me Pele. When we moved to Bauru, this ‘Pile’ became ‘Pele’. Because I was young, I somehow distorted the nickname and said that when I grew up, I wanted to be a goalie like ‘Pile’. “Whenever I could I used to nip into the goal and play around, and whenever I managed to stop a shot I’d shout, ‘Good one, Bilé!’ or ‘Great save, Bilé!’ (a goalie team-mate of his father). “When I was three or four, my father would take me along to Vasco (club) training sessions,” he told The Guardian in 2006. He was also a powerful and accurate shooter, able to score goals from far and near. In his autobiography, Pele wrote about how he and his friends would play with a ball made of rags and how football gave them a sense of purpose and hope.Īs a child, Edson had excellent ball control and was able to dribble past defenders with ease. The home was also where he learned the values of hard work and determination, which would serve him well throughout his career. By all accounts, the family supported his love of football. Pele spent much of his time playing football in the streets and in the small yard of his home, and he developed his skills and technique through hours of shoeless practice. The family lived in poverty and often struggled to make ends meet. This is where the young Edson put foot to ball for the first time. The family lived in a thatched-roof house with a small yard in a neighbourhood of other small houses and narrow, dirt streets. Rich in culture and dotted with colonial buildings, the rural town had a population of about 20,000 in the 1940s, and was described as quiet and peaceful, surrounded by lush forests and rolling hills. Pele was born to Dondinho and Celeste Arantes on October 23, 1940, in Tres Corações, a picturesque and socially active town in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Pele died on december 29 after a prolonged battle with colon cancer | Reuters His widow Marcia Cibele Aoki stands over the casket. He has brought happiness and pride to millions of people around the world, and he will always be remembered as one of the greatest of all time.”įinal goodbye: Pele lies in state at the Vila Belmiro stadium in Santos, São Paulo. He is a symbol of Brazil and of the joy of football. In his 1964 book Viagem em Torno de Pele, Brazilian journalist Mario Filho wrote: “Pele is more than a great player. Pele’s success made the sport more accessible to and popular among people of all races. Those days, black players were systematically discriminated against, excluded from professional leagues and the national team, and otherwise faced significant barriers. In a country where football was primarily played and followed by elite whites and the middle- and upper-classes, Pele’s success changed the perception of black people. Clean and unspoiled, Pele’s character made his greatness visible early on. Pele spoke often and from the heart about his gratitude to God, to football, to the Brazilian people and to Brazil itself. “A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides―gratitude and purity,” wrote the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who reflected deeply on what makes any individual exceptionally great. He transformed play into a mix of magic and technique, which epitomised and popularised the description of football as jogo bonito―“the beautiful game”. Named after the inventor Thomas Edison, Pele married science with art. They also note the joy of a child playing with a ball. Every early description of his career notes this emergence of an innovator. The striker introduced a new level of skill and technical ability to Brazilian football, using both his feet and his head in manners others had not. ![]() He may just as well have been describing Pelé. The thinker Arthur Schopenhauer described talent as hitting a target no one else can hit, and genius as hitting a target no one else can see. And for them to remember me as a good player.” Pele in a 2014 interview THE WEEK published “After my death, I would like people to remember that I was a good person who always wanted to unite people and draw communities together. ![]()
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