He signed autographs “Edson=Pele.” Because “I want people to always remember Edson,” he said. “Edson is the base.”
Edson Arantes do Nascimento was the poor Black child from the Brazilian mining town of Tres Coracoes who left home at 14 with minimal schooling but whose soccer wizardry transformed him into a rich global celebrity. Pele spent the rest of his life—he died Thursday at 82—among the half-dozen most recognizable names on the planet.
“I thought [after a playing career that ended in 1977],” he said a few years ago, “I would go back to Brazil and be Edson again. But I continue.”
Born shortly after electrical power came to his parents’ hometown, he was named after the inventor of the phonograph, motion picture and lightbulb and wound up being the Thomas Edison of soccer, illuminating his sport and his country.
As a child, he picked up the sobriquet “Pele” in playground soccer. Maybe that name derived from young Edson’s mangled pronunciation of his favorite player Bile (bee-LAY), who was the Vasco da Gama goalkeeper, evolving into peh-LAY. Or from Sao Paulo natives’ vernacular for street soccer: Pelada. Or from a shortening of the Portuguese word for “lightfoot”—pe ligeiro. Pele himself said he never knew the origin of his nickname.
It was his primary role in Brazil’s first of five World Cup titles in 1958, when Pele was only 17, that was embraced at home and abroad as an example of his nation’s style and competence. Repeat Cup championships in ’62 and ’70 for Brazil and Pele cemented his status as national treasure of Brazil, a legal means to prevent foreign teams from signing him, even as his club team, Santos, remained in demand around the globe, further spreading the word of his—and his country’s—capacity.
And when, at 35, he came out of retirement to join the New York Cosmos of the fledgling North American Soccer League in the mid-1970s, it was the spark that prompted Americans to investigate the appeal of what had been a “foreign” sport on these shores.
Before Pele, the United States was a soccer wasteland. Only 3,746 people attended the Cosmos’ inaugural game in 1970, prompting the team’s early vagabond existence over the next seven years, from Yankee Stadium to Hofstra and Randalls Island’s decaying and since-demolished Downing Stadium.
Upon Pele’s arrival in 1975, a reported 2,000 fans showed up for his first practice session; 21,278 packed the Downing dump for an exhibition game two days later; three days after that, 22,500 somehow squeezed into the old joint for Pele’s official NASL debut.
His presence prompted other global stars to join him on the Cosmos’ roster, most notably German Franz Beckenbauer and Italian Giorgio Chinaglia. By 1977, the Cosmos had moved into the new Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., and were drawing crowds in excess of 75,000.
Though Pele’s earlier 1970s appearances in New York exhibition games allowed him “to go to the supermarket in New York and buy things,” he soon could go nowhere without being recognized. “Kids, 8 years old”—born decades after he stopped playing—“they are calling to Pele,” he said.
Coaxed by his mentor and first Cosmos coach, Julio Mazzei, to further his education, Pele worked to communicate with the children who looked up to him and with movers and shakers in business and government.
“I try to speak the languages,” he said. “I try to speak English, French, Italian, Spanish. And [Brazil’s national language] Portuguese, of course. Soccer opens the door. When I first played for Santos, I don’t even speak Portuguese well, and I start to get uncomfortable with that fact.”
He remained soccer’s globe-trotting sovereign, a sort of benevolent ruler who shook hands and kissed babies and endorsed products and lent an aura to virtually any soccer event of significance. He was presidential, known to all—no introduction or passport required. Upon Pele’s death, current Brazilian superstar Neymar called him “eternal.”
As Edson had said of Pele, “I continue.”