soccer player; television sportscaster
Personal Information
Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, October 23, 1940, in Tres Coracoes, Minas Gerais, Brazil; professionally known as "Pelé" or Perola Negra ("Black Pearl"); son of Joao Ramos do Nascimento (also known as "Dondinho"; a minor league soccer player and civil servant); married first wife, Rosemarie Cholby, February 1966 (divorced, 1978); married second wife, Assiria Seixas Lemos (a psychologist), April 30, 1994; children: three (first marriage).
Career
Professional soccer player, 1956-77. Began playing soccer as a child in Bauru, Brazil; played in Bauru Club, 1950-54; played with Santos Football Club, 1956-72; retired for the first time, 1972; played with New York Cosmos, 1975-77; retired permanently, 1977. Made first World Cup appearance at age 17; scored 1,280 goals (including a record 92 hat tricks) over the course of career. Later employed in numerous promotional sponsorship programs. Author, with Robert L. Fish, of My Life and the Beautiful Game: The Autobiography of Pelé, 1977.
Life's Work
Retired Brazilian soccer player Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, is among the greatest and most celebrated sports superstars of his era. Even in the United States, where enthusiasm for soccer is eclipsed by the popularity of American football, Pelé's name is synonymous with his sport. Having made his first appearance in the prestigious World Cup championship competition at the age of 18, the record-breaking inside left forward thrilled the sports world with his on-field agility throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
He repeatedly led his national team to victory in international championships, wowing audiences with his near- impossible plays and his uncanny ability to anticipate the moves of his opponents. At one time the highest paid athlete in the world, he ended his soccer career in 1977 with 1,280 goals, a record surpassed only by fellow Brazilian Artur Friedenreich.
Brazil is an enormous country in eastern South America, taking up nearly half of the continent's land mass. Claimed by the Portuguese in 1500 AD, it became an independent state in the nineteenth century. Although the Portuguese influence remains in Brazil--it is the largest Portuguese-speaking nation in the world--its population is multiracial, with an ethnic mix of Portuguese, Italian, German, Japanese, Amerindian, and Black peoples.
Soccer is Brazil's best-loved sport. The winner of the World Cup in 1958, 1962, and 1970 (and runner-up in 1950), Brazil has earned a lasting image as a leader in the world soccer community. The game is believed to have been introduced to the nation in 1894 by a wealthy Brazilian-born Englishman named Charles Miller. Within two decades, soccer would become a true game of the people, not just a sport for the rich. Immigrants from Italy, Spain, and Portugal flooded Brazil in the early twentieth century looking for work; many of these workers were captivated by the game and learned to play it. But, although the face of Brazil's national team began to change with the addition of European immigrant players, it was not until 1909 that Friedenreich, the first player of racially mixed heritage, broke the country's color barrier.
Pelé is revered as a sports icon in his home country and throughout the world. An incident witnessed in Rio de Janeiro by Sport magazine contributor Joel Millman illustrates this point. An appliance shop was showing video-clips of Pelé's greatest moments in successive World Cup championships. "A father standing in front of an appliance store on Avenida Presidente Vargas [shows] his son how Pelé re-created soccer," wrote Millman. "The grey and white footage floats by: Pelé, his forward movement a tumble of windmill arms and swivel legs, leaps past two defenders, bounces the ball off the turf before him then off his puffing chest then to his right foot before sending it past the diving goalie. 'Stockholm,' the father murmers, squeezing the son's elbow." The father was referring to Pelé's brilliant World Cup debut in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1958; young Pelé helped usher in a new era of Brazilian supremacy in soccer.
Called the Perola Negra, or "Black Pearl," by some of his compatriots, Edson Arantes do Nascimento showed raw talent for soccer as a child. He picked up the nickname Pelé--the meaning of which is unknown even to him--on the soccer field. Pel, was born October 23, 1940, in the small village of Tres Cora|oes, Minas Gerais, Brazil. His father, Joao Ramos do Nascimento, was, for a time, a center forward with a minor league Brazilian soccer club in Bauru, Sao Paulo.
Pelé's earliest dreams were of becoming a professional soccer player. He dropped out of school when he was nine years old and received early coaching in soccer from his father. By the time he was 13, Pelé had captured the attention of World Cup great Waldemar de Brito, manager of Bauru. After a couple of years on the Bauru junior team, Pelé became one of the club's best players.
In 1956, de Brito took the soccer prodigy to the seacoast city of Santos, where Coach Luis Alonso Perez let him try out for the Santos Football Club. Before long, Pelé had moved up from the Santos junior team to the first team reserves. By the end of the year, he was promoted to the first team's starting lineup, where he enjoyed continued success.
With Pelé on the team, the Santos Football Club became a powerful force in Brazilian soccer, winning nine Sao Paulo championships between 1958 and 1969. Pelé first seized the imagination of the international soccer world as a 17-year-old member of the Brazilian National Team at the finals of the 1958 World Cup championship, held in Stockholm. His masterful performance on the field, including two legendary goals against the host country, helped lead Brazil to its first world championship.
Injuries kept Pelé out of Brazil's second World Cup win in 1962, but he led Santos to victories against Europe's top teams in the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup in 1962 and 1963. But as Pelé's reputation grew, so too did infighting on the international soccer circuit. The Santos Club's opponents focused all their efforts on "getting"--and in some cases incapacitating--Pel,, the mainstay of the team. Referees seemed indifferent to the illegal knee and elbow shots inflicted on him by his competitors.
"Nobody in the game had more fun than I did when I first became professional," Pelé commented in the 1966 edition of International Football Book. "This honeymoon came to an abrupt end around 1960.... I've been kicked from pillar to post, particularly in those up-country league games where the home team decide this is the only way to stop Pelé and Santos. At first I was shocked, and then I became angry. Sometimes I hit back and because my name was Pelé, news of such incidents made every newspaper in Brazil. Nobody ever bothered to write about what started the whole business.... In this mood I sometimes feel like giving up football altogether, but I carry on because those few precious moments of pleasure from football mean more to me than anything else."
In spite of Brazil's elimination from World Cup contention by England in 1966, the team came back in 1970 to take its third world championship--at that time, an unprecedented feat. Pel, drew international attention for his larger-than-life demeanor and his extraordinary athletic prowess: his ingenious plays, unparalleled agility, devotion to team effort, and sincere love of the game made him a cultural icon.
Two years later, at the age of 32, Pelé retired from professional soccer. He was content to cap off his career with his triumphant performance in the 1970 World Cup--Brazil's first victory to be televised--and he resisted pressure from both sports and government officials to play in the World Cup in '74. But his retirement was not permanent. Following a streak of bad investments that left him near financial ruin, he was forced to return to the field in the mid-1970s. Signing a $3.5 million contract with the New York Cosmos, Pel, officially joined the American club in '75 and remained there for two and a half seasons, giving "U.S. soccer a significant boost" in the process, according to an Associated Press report. He retired permanently in 1977.
Brazil was steeped in political turmoil in the mid-1960s, when the republic was overturned by a coup and replaced by a military-backed dictatorial regime. In 1979, as Brazil's economy was bottoming out and the military junta contemplated a return to civilian rule, Pelé drew sharp criticism from supporters of democracy in his country. Distancing himself from the political tumult, he failed to use his tremendous influence and near-mythic status to rally around the call for liberalization in Brazil; he stated quite simply that he was an athlete, not a politician, telling Millman: "I play to make people happy. If we win there are still problems but at least the people get to be happy for several months."
Political controversy aside, Pelé is still widely regarded as the greatest soccer star who ever lived--even more than 15 years after his retirement. But he revealed the burden of his superstar status to Millman, explaining: "Very few people know Edson. Edson is the normal person, he has defects. One day he is going to be dead. But Pel,, he cannot make a mistake.... I have to deal with both, but I think the bigger responsibility is for Edson, because he was born first. I don't know why I became Pel,. God only knows."
After his retirement in 1977, Pelé became a sports commentator and the leading promoter of soccer in the United States. "It is a mission," Pelé told E.M. Swift in Sports Illustrated. "To bring soccer to the countries where [the sport] is undeveloped, this is my passion. I want to see soccer all over the world." As a spokesperson for FIFA, soccer's governing body, he captured the American limelight in 1994, when the World Cup came to Detroit, Michigan. And in a lavish ceremony held on the Brazilian coast that spring, Pelé married his second wife, Assiria Seixas Lemos.
Awards
Latin American Footballer of the Year, 1973; Brazil's stadium Maceio Estadio Rei Pelé is named for him.
Further Reading
Books
- Condon, Robert J., The Fifty Finest Athletes of the 20th Century: A Worldwide Reference, McFarland, 1990.
- Pelé and Robert L. Fish, My Life and the Beautiful Game: The Autobiography of Pelé, Doubleday, 1977.
- The World Encyclopedia of Soccer, edited by Michael L. La Blanc and Richard Henshaw, Gale, 1994.
Periodicals- Christian Science Monitor, November 5, 1964.
- New York Times, December 2, 1962, p. 7; September 6, 1966.
- Reader's Digest, November 1964.
- Sport, December 1986, pp. 120-23.
- Sports Illustrated, October 24, 1966, p. 77; June 20, 1994, pp. 87-90.
- Additional information for this profile was taken from the 1966 edition of the International Football Book and from Associated Press wire reports dated April 11, 1994 and May 1, 1994.
— Barbara Carlisle Bigelow
- Pelé 
Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.
