The Brazilian won the World Cup three times. Here, three men who came face-to-face with the striker reveal their experiencesFew people had heard of Pelé before this tournament in Sweden. By the end – when he had scored twice in the final at the age of just 17 – he had become a household name. The great Swedish winger Kurt Hamrin recalls a “rare talent” who was humble and kind.“In 1958 he was unknown to us Swedes. At the start of the tournament he was injured and didn’t play until the last match of the group stage. I first heard of him a few days before the final, apparently Brazil had a 17-year-old left wing that scored four goals in...
The first global football superstar made everyone smile and his tricks were never designed to diminish his opponentsFor the generation born just after the end of the second world war, the emergence of the teenaged Pelé during the 1958 World Cup opened a door to a new dimension of football. The brief televised highlights of the matches in Sweden were broadcast in a black and white that was actually more like blurred shades of grey but already the Brazilian prodigy seemed to be sharply focused and bathed in a golden glow.The skinny 17-year-old with the flat-top haircut scored six goals, several of them executed with an impudent wit and a hitherto unimaginable level of technique, and then wept openly on...
The Brazil striker can still win things but his major-chord career is over in the place that made him rich but stole his valueThe morning after its seven-game World Cup lifespan was complete, Stadium 974 – the shipping container one, a kind of elite Qatari hipster project, cod-Hackney to go with the cod-Paris – was already being dismantled by men with diggers and grabbers and electric wrenches.This is the way of things here. Indeed, as the yellow-shirted travellers streamed through the night on Doha’s driverless metro, another Brazil World Cup campaign done in a haze of tears and grief, it was tempting to wonder how long before the men who dismantle things would be out with their wrecking bars, setting...
Most key figures left in the last eight play in Europe but Lionel Messi’s side have a mindset unique to South AmericaThe quarter-finals are about to begin and the world is talking about Morocco. For the fourth time an African nation and for the first time an Arab nation is among the last eight. Geographically, this is true, but in terms of football culture Morocco is European. One of the stars, Achraf Hakimi of Paris Saint-Germain, was born in Madrid and played in Real’s youth teams. The other, Chelsea’s Hakim Ziyech, grew up in the Netherlands and made his name at Ajax.Morocco, whose coast can be easily seen from Andalucía, has adapted its football to the Spanish rondo style. The...
O Rei was hopefully watching on from his hospital bed as Brazil evoked memories of the adored teams of 1970 and 1982“Football is happiness. It’s a dance. It’s a true party,” Pelé had said and here, on the night he watched from the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in São Paulo, it was. O Rei had posted that in September to encourage Vinícius Júnior never to back down in the face of abuse: if he wanted to celebrate goals dancing, he should dance. In fact, they all should. “We will not allow racism to stop us smiling”, he had insisted; “dance, Vini,” became the command, going viral; and by the time Brazil reached Qatar, they had a whole repertoire, ready to...