This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 9, 2023 - January 15, 2023
A tumultuous year in football came to a spectacular climax before the saddest of endings. December alone needed a Dickensian intro: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. The greatest player of the 21st century won the supreme accolade while the greatest of all time (GOAT) heard the final whistle.
Even with his final act, Pelé’s timing was faultless. Just as the clamour to elevate Fifa World Cup star Lionel Messi to the Brazilian’s lofty perch was building, it was as if “the King” had decreed: “Enough is enough.”
Always sure of his supremacy, he left the field knowing the avalanche of evidence — the sheer weight of stories and stats, grainy footage and glowing tributes — that his passing would trigger would be overwhelming enough to swing the debate in his favour.
And so it proved. On every count, the Brazilian wins: three World Cups out of four compared to one in five attempts; more goals, more awe, more impact. In every corner apart from his own Argentinian realm, Messi’s thunder had been well and truly stolen.
The little maestro’s win is certainly not forgotten, but all we have seen and heard for the last 10 days is about Pelé’s World Cups, not Messi’s — and from as deep into antiquity as 1958. From his seismic arrival as a 17-year-old to the crowning glory of 1970, it was impossible not to be moved.
Much of mankind will now be familiar with every facet of his story — except perhaps one. Just as Qatar used football to put itself on the map, so did Brazil which achieved it without spending US$300 billion. Inadvertently at first, then ruthlessly and, finally, culturally and commercially, it used Pelé. And he was not a project; he was forged in poverty.
Born in a shanty town, he had to augment the family income by shining shoes at four. And it was a shoeshine box that he playfully strummed throughout his Netflix documentary. Playful but poignant.
You couldn’t find a greater contrast between the two countries, not least the way they came from nowhere to world prominence. Qatar’s rise is well documented; Brazil’s less so. A sleeping giant — even in football.
When it hosted the 1950 World Cup, it was meant to be its coming out party in its new 200,000 capacity Maracanã stadium. Pelé was nine, listened to the final on the radio and cried when Uruguay won 2-1. Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues called it, “Our Hiroshima.”
For a country still searching for its soul, it couldn’t have been worse. Racism was never far away — a legacy of the late abolition of slavery (1888) — and black players unfairly copped the blame for the humiliation by their tiny neighbour.
There was more shame in Switzerland in 1954. Brazil bowed to Hungary in the notorious Battle of Berne, finished with nine men and attacked the Hungarian dressing room afterwards. So when they flew to Sweden four years later, a good showing was badly needed. What they produced was one of football’s and Brazil’s great turning points.
No one has defined a World Cup like Pelé did in 1958. He changed the game, he was Elvis, he became sport’s first superstar. He also changed Brazil. President Fernando Cardoso declared it: “Our rebirth as a modern country.”
They played with a freedom that had not been seen before, and can be traced back to Brazil’s African heritage — specifically, to the slaves’ martial art of capoeira. It incorporated elusive, swaying ginga moves that were embraced by players of all colours.
Pelé ensured that the style was not just for decoration, winning trophies as well. He even gave it a name: jogobonita (the beautiful game). It has given the country a soul and an identity which Qatar’s billions cannot buy.
In Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, Alex Bellos wrote that after Pelé led it to its third World Cup, “Brazil would forever be known as the country of football. Now the words ‘Brazilian’ and ‘footballer’ go together as naturally as Tibetan and monk, or French and perfume.”
Pelé was the driving force and had put his country on that much-coveted map. To achieve the same goal, Qatar, with no football heritage, chose a different path — exploiting its massive wealth. You could say both countries used their resources — one with natural gas, the other with a supernatural talent. And for both, football was the vehicle.
But where the Gulf state built a stunning infrastructure, it has no soul and has been criticised for its cultural emptiness and fake façades. And, of course, for its sportswashing to cleanse its image. Not called that at the time, but it was a method employed by Brazil for a brief and brutal interlude.
After the 1964 military coup, the generals were aware of Pelé’s paramountcy in Brazilian society. After he was kicked out of the 1966 World Cup by vicious tackling, he vowed never to play in the tournament again. But the junta, increasingly unpopular and isolated, needed a distraction. What better than “the King” leading the nation to another triumph?
They made it a “government issue” and didn’t just insist he played, they demanded victory. Pressure? You’d never know from the way they played — swaying, ginga moves and all. But as Pelé graphically recounts in Netflix’s documentary, after the victory in the final, he broke down in the dressing room, sobbing: “I didn’t die, I didn’t die.” They couldn’t have, could they?
This was the answer to critics like 1970 teammate Paulo Cesar Lima, who claimed: “Just one single statement from him could have gone a long way in Brazil.” Just as he was for not making more of a stand against the junta, Pelé was slammed for his stance on racism. Again, he preferred to lead by example.
“Going to Africa was a simultaneously humbling and gratifying experience for me,” he said. “I could sense the hope the Africans derived from seeing a black man who had been so successful in the world.” It had an effect in Brazil, too, as politician Benedita Da Silva acknowledged: “He was the most inspiring image that we’d ever had of a poor black boy,” she said.
The first dividend was from Pelé’s overseas tours with Santos, which came when he was a de facto ambassador and with enough global influence to stop a war. When Santos played in Lagos, Biafran rebels were fighting the Nigerian government. No ceasefire was negotiated but such was the desire to see him play, both sides laid down their arms for the duration of his visit. Gunfire was heard as his plane took off.
But it wasn’t all plain sailing. Bad advice proved costly in business where he was seen as both a corporate stooge as well as a political stooge. He admitted that many business projects were as much about building his own brand as setting an example, but maintained that in building his brand he was also building the nation.
The truth is he had already done that on the field. Now the ninth largest economy in the world and one of the BRICS, Brazil has been transformed.
No nation has ever owed a footballer so much.
Bob Holmes is a long-time sportswriter specialising in football
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