Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, is quite possibly the greatest football player of the 20th century and one of the most incredible athletes the world has ever seen. His name is known in all corners of the world and he’s a Brazilian icon and reference in sport. Pelé transformed an average and unimpressive Santos team into the greatest force on the planet for more than a decade, and broke Brazil’s World Cup jinx in a way that would’ve made the best sportsbooks in Ontario rethink their oddsbooks.
A Thousand Goals
A three-time world football champion, the number 10 shirt is immortalized on his back. He was the first man to score over a thousand goals. The first and only to win three World Cups. He was the youngest to score a goal (goal, by the way) in a Cup final, at just 17 years old. He was the youngest player to be world champion.
And he even stopped, along with his Santos, a civil war. And he won all the titles that a player would want to win. The greatest genius of our football has done a little bit of everything in his long career, and he has so much history that we would need pages and pages of the blog to tell.
Son of football players Dondinho and Dona Celeste, Pelé was born on October 23, 1940 (date that he himself confirms, although on his certificate says he was born on the 21st) in the city of Três Corações, in Minas Gerais. From an early age he showed signs that he would even follow his father’s footsteps. In 1950, the year of the World Cup, the boy Pelé was watching the final on July 16 with his father. After Uruguayans defeated Brazil by 2 to 1 in the final, Pelé saw Dondinho was in tears, and told him “Don’t cry, Daddy. I will win a World Cup for you”.
Santos
At the age of 15, Pelé was taken to Santos Futebol Clube. Just two years later, he was top scorer in the Campeonato Paulista with 17 goals. That earned him a call up for his first World Cup in what was at a time a risk by the national team coach, Vicente Feola. Pelé was a powerhouse all tournament long, taking Brazil to the World Cup final against the hosts, Sweden.
Right at the beginning of the game, Sweden opened the score, in just the 4th minute. It was the first time that the Brazilian national team was behind the score in the whole cup. Didi, the genius in the Brazilian midfield, was calm when he took the ball, walked calmly to the central circle, and said, according to the legend: “let’s crush these gringos!”.
And Brazil did it. Vavá scored at the 9th minute and then on the 32nd to turn the game around. Pelé made it 3-1 and Zagallo added one more to make it 4 to 1. Sweden got one back, but Pelé scored the fifth and as soon as that happened, the referee whistled the end of the game: Brazil, for the first time in its history, was world football champion. He had fulfilled his promise to his father, and would win the World Cup twice more, in 1962 and 1970.