Why Soccer Matters

by Pelé

  The real revelation, of course, was the player who would henceforth be known in Brazil as O Anjo de Pernas Tortas—“The Angel with Bent Legs.” Thanks largely to him, we were through to the quarterfinals, and a matchup against Wales that would take place later that week in the exact same stadium.

  “Congratulations, Gothenburg,” one Swedish newspaper proclaimed. “On Thursday, you’ll get to see Garrincha again!”

  14

  Our victory over the mighty Soviets had another effect: It was the game that convinced people back in Brazil that maybe, just maybe, it was OK to start believing in their national team again. All the despair of 1950, and the apathy of 1954, started to finally thaw, as if the clouds had parted after a long winter and the sun was finally shining on Brazilian soccer again. Radios flipped back on; newspapers began to fly off the stands. Our fans began daring to dream once more of that elusive first world championship.

  Our performance was important, but Brazilians were also feeling better about themselves in general. Soccer wasn’t the only good thing happening in our country in 1958. That was also the same year that João Gilberto recorded his album Chega de Saudade, which helped launch a brand-new musical genre: the bossa nova. The album’s most popular track, “The Girl from Ipanema,” would become one of the most famous songs of all time. Bossa nova joined soccer as the face of Brazil in the world—and was an even bigger source of pride in some ways, because it was something totally and uniquely Brazilian that we had invented ourselves.

  In coming years, I’d get to spend some time with João, and despite his reputation for being a slightly difficult personality, he always graciously indulged me in my somewhat amateurish passion for music. We met at several events in Brazil and in New York City, and I always found him refreshingly direct. I do have one regret though—I never got to play music with him. I might not be the world’s best musician, but I did pick up guitar over the years and I loved to sing. What I lacked in talent, I made up for in passion, and I got to play over the years with other Brazilian music giants like Tom Jobim, Sérgio Mendes and Roberto Carlos. Heck, I even got to sing with Frank Sinatra once! But I never got to play with João, even though I greatly respected what he did and felt a certain kinship with him. We were part of two victorious generations who would promote Brazil for decades to come.

  In the late 1950s, even our politics seemed to be going pretty well—the president was Juscelino Kubitschek, an easygoing and competent man whom some called “the bossa nova president.” Juscelino—who like many Brazilian presidents was known by his first name—was determined to make Brazil a modern and prosperous country as quickly as he possibly could. He called his development plan “Fifty years of progress in five,” with a focus on building up Brazilian industries. Suddenly, we were producing kitchen appliances, sewing machines and other goods that other countries took for granted, but had never been widely available in the tropics before. Auto factories began to pop up in greater São Paulo, and soon, Brazil would begin its passionate love affair with cars.

  Juscelino’s biggest and most ambitious project was to build a new capital from scratch—Brasilia. The city would be located on a stretch of arid high plains right on the border of the state where I was born, Minas Gerais. The idea was that, by forcing the politicians to leave Rio and live in the interior, maybe they’d start paying a little more attention to places like Baurú and Três Corações, and maybe some money would even fall out of their pockets for the humble folk. Up until that point, Brazil’s biggest cities were concentrated almost entirely along the ocean—“like crabs clinging to the coast,” to use one famous phrase. Juscelino, being the impatient sort, wanted the city finished by 1960. There had never really been an undertaking like this in modern history—at the exact moment we were playing in Sweden, thousands of construction workers were busily erecting the ministries and palaces that would soon form one of the world’s most unique cities. It was another achievement that seemed to indicate that Brazil had left its poor, backward, obscure past behind.

  Brazil was, in short, a country fully primed for a giant leap—a transformation. All we had to do was keep the ball rolling.

  15

  The Welsh, being the clever sort, came to their match against us with one overriding objective—not to let Garrincha beat them.

  After his extraordinary display against the Soviets, it was a pretty good strategy. Throughout that game, Garrincha had at least two, and sometimes three defenders shadowing him at all times. Not even he, with his transcendent talent, was able to work his magic while being so thoroughly smothered.

  The obvious drawback to triple-teaming anybody was that it opened up opportunities for other players. But that Welsh team was very good, with a stout defense and a widely respected and beloved coach, Jimmy Murphy. In group play, they had soundly beaten Hungary, which had sent us home in the 1954 World Cup and ultimately placed second in that tournament. Were the Welsh from a relatively small nation? Yes. But for goodness’ sake, the last team on earth that was going to underestimate a small-country opponent in 1958 was Brazil!

  The first half ended scoreless. I didn’t really get many chances with the ball. But Didi later said that he had been “saving” me during the first forty-five minutes of the game. He believed that because of my age, no one would really pay attention to me—they might even forget about me entirely. I was a boy no one needed to fear; and sure enough, the defenders’ attention seemed to fade as the game went on. Didi was like a great conductor, and I was the young soloist whose moment was yet to come.

  With twenty minutes left in the game, my moment finally arrived. Garrincha, for maybe the first time all game, had only one defender on him. He took advantage of the opening and passed to Didi, who passed the ball to me. I had my back to the goal, and Didi was still running, expecting me to give it back to him. But instead, I reacted instinctively, just as Dondinho had always taught me. I “caught” the ball with my chest, and then, without letting it touch the ground, I looped it over the outstretched foot of a Welsh defender—“cheekily,” one announcer said. The ball bounced once, and I nimbly stepped around the defender and rifled it home into the bottom left-hand corner of the goal.

  Brazil 1, Wales 0.

  I screamed—a long, guttural roar. I ran toward the goal and jumped for joy, once, twice, and then fell on my knees to pull the ball out of the back of the net.

  Four of my teammates came running into the goal and swarmed me, knocking me down and pinning me to the ground. After them came a dozen or so news photographers—they raced onto the field itself, which they really weren’t supposed to do, but oh well! They began taking shots of us rolling around on the ground. Finally, one of the Welsh players came in, somewhat grouchily, and started trying to pull us off of one another, as if to say—All right, guys, that’s enough.

  I really wasn’t trying to gloat, or show anybody up. The honest truth is, I was paralyzed with happiness. I just couldn’t stop screaming and laughing. I felt like something within me had been awakened—never to sleep again.

  16

  That goal provided us with our final margin against Wales—the slimmest of victories, 1–0. After the game, I remember getting hugs from teammates, and some congratulations from members of the press. But after that, everything became kind of a blur. I had become caught up in something much bigger than I was, and rather than fight it, I let myself get swept away.

  I’ve always dreamed of soccer—what else?—and during those days and nights after the Wales victory I would drift away to fantasies the likes of which I’d never had before. Each dribble, each pass, each shot now spawned many different possibilities. I’d dream of passing the ball left instead of right, juking a final defender instead of taking a shot far from goal. Now that I knew for certain I could score a goal on the world stage, more possibilities seemed to open up—instead of three variations on a single play, I could now see ten. And the goal itself seemed a hundred yards w
ide.

  I’d wake up with a start—wide-awake and utterly happy, ready to take the field, and ready to make these dreams a reality.

  17

  Before I knew it, I was on the field once again—this time against France, in the World Cup semifinal.

  I was quiet once again in the first half, which ended with us up 2–1—a tenuous lead. Echoing the previous match, Didi virtually ignored me for the first forty-five minutes. But I didn’t despair—I knew the pattern by now. And indeed, after halftime, things started to open up.

  Seven minutes after the second half started, a very ripe-looking ball came rolling across the face of the goal. The French goalkeeper, Claude Abbes, couldn’t hold on to it, and when the ball squirmed from his grasp, I knocked it into the empty net for my first goal of the game. I couldn’t miss. It was one of the easiest goals I’d ever score.

  Brazil 3, France 1.

  Ten minutes later, in the game’s sixty-fourth minute, Garrincha nearly dribbled out of bounds on our opponent’s side before cutting the ball back to me. I brought the ball down and got it past an oncoming French defender, and then passed it on. The ball bounced around a bit, before rolling back over to me about eight yards from the goal. I then rifled the ball in for my second goal.

  Brazil 4, France 1.

  After another ten minutes, with seventy-five of the game’s ninety-plus minutes now gone, I received yet another brilliant pass from—who else? Garrincha. From just outside the penalty box, on the right side of the field, he passed it over to me. I was about twelve yards out, and pretty well covered, but I was able to create just a little bit of space and knock the ball into the bottom left-hand corner of the net for my third goal of the game—a hat trick, in just one half of play.

  Brazil 5, France 1.

  By the end of the game, the crowd was going absolutely crazy. Even after the French scored a last-minute goal to make the final score 5–2, people inside the stadium continued to clap, laugh and shout my name. “Pelé! Pelé!” The atmosphere was one of delight and discovery—as if something new and unexpected had come into the world.

  The Swedish crowd was so effusive that I felt like I was back in Brazil. This was very generous of them, especially since by that point some people in the stadium must have known the truth—we’d be playing the host team in the final.

  18

  It was only fitting that, before we could raise the Cup, we had to stare down the Ghost of 1950 one last time.

  Our opponent in the final was, indeed, the host country: Sweden. This presented an unexpected problem. Both Brazil and Sweden had, up to that point in the 1958 tournament, been using yellow jerseys. One of us would have to give them up for the final. The Brazilian delegation thought the Swedish should be the gracious hosts, and let the visiting team—us—use our preferred jersey. But it was not to be. The Swedes decided to resolve the issue with a coin flip, which they promptly won.

  No problem, our team leaders thought. After all, the Brazilian flag had several other colors, providing several other options—white, green, or blue. So the directors announced at a team meeting they had chosen white.

  A very neutral, safe color, right?

  Wrong.

  White was the color that the Brazilian team wore during the final against Uruguay at the Maracanã in 1950.

  All the players looked at one another, wide-eyed. This was lunacy! The room got very quiet. Finally, the team directors realized their mistake, and Dr. Paulo Machado abruptly declared we’d be wearing blue instead. When this failed to noticeably lift our spirits, Dr. Machado pointed out that blue was also the color of Brazil’s patron saint: Our Lady of Aparecida. This revelation met with some oohs and ahhs from the players—thus, the matter was considered closed.

  Teams nowadays play with multimillion-dollar operating budgets, numerous corporate sponsors, and enough uniforms and shoes to comfortably dress a small army. But in 1958, there was still precious little money in professional soccer. As a result, the sudden change in uniforms presented us with another dilemma—we had run out of shirts! Sure, we had brought some blue ones with us, but we had worn them a lot during our practices. They were all tattered and faded now—not exactly worthy of the pageantry of a World Cup final. So two of our team officials, Adolpho Marques and the dentist Mário Trigo, took it upon themselves to go into downtown Stockholm to buy us some shiny, brand-new shirts from a Swedish department store. Mário Américo—the same kindly therapist who had looked after my knee—then spent the whole Saturday morning before the game painstakingly removing our numbers and logos from the yellow shirts one by one and sewing them back onto the new blue ones.

  With that emergency resolved, everything else seemed like a piece of cake.

  19

  When I woke up on the morning of the final—June 28, 1958—you’d think I would have been feeling unbearable pressure. But Didi and all the veterans had done a great job of keeping all of us loose, and by that point we knew our team was blessed with a great combination of experience and talent. The team management’s methodical approach of shielding us from the outside world had also worked pretty well, in the end—we had precious little exposure to the histrionics playing out in the press back home. In fact, we were so sheltered that Garrincha acted as if he was shocked to learn this would be our final game. In the Rio de Janeiro state tournament, which Garrincha played in with his club team back home, you got to play each opponent twice. In the World Cup, of course, it was now just one final game—for all the marbles.

  “Really?” he said incredulously. “What a boring tournament!”

  I’m pretty sure Garrincha was just joking around. But when we arrived at the stadium later that day in Solna, a suburb of Stockholm, we were all still cracking up.

  OK, we had some nerves. They were evidenced by a number of sloppy passes and turnovers by our team right after the opening whistle. Sweden quickly took advantage of our mistakes and scored first—putting them up 1–0 in just the fourth minute of the game. I guess this could have rattled us—it was, in fact, the first time our team had trailed in the entire tournament. And the Swedish home crowd was going crazy, literally throwing their hats into the air.

  But, like I said, we had acquired this new, almost eerie confidence—and the same fantastic leadership that had brought us to that point wasn’t going to buckle now. After that first Swedish goal, it was Didi—of course—who picked up the ball and walked very slowly with it back to midfield, speaking very calmly to each Brazilian player he passed along the way. “Very good, that’s over!” Didi said cheerily. “Time for us now!”

  Indeed, just five minutes later, Garrincha got loose on the right-hand side of the field, pulling the Swedish goalie out of position. He passed it over to Vavá, who scored the tying goal. In the thirty-second minute of the first half, I got free and passed the ball to Garrincha, who found Vavá once again. That gave us a 2–1 lead going into halftime.

  Shortly after the second half began, I scored one of the most well-known goals of my career. I called to Nilton Santos to make a long pass from across the field. I caught the ball with my chest, then let it drop as a Swedish player ran toward me. With a flick of my foot, I then flipped the ball right over the defender’s head. It was pure street ball, the kind of move that we had practiced a million times back at “Rubens Arruda Stadium” in Baurú. Perhaps only a seventeen-year-old would have had the sheer audacity to try such a move in a World Cup final. I ran around the defender and volleyed it home from about ten yards out, making it Brazil 3, Sweden 1.

  After that goal, a strange thing happened: We won over the Swedish crowd. Even though they were surely disappointed to see their own team losing, some of them began chanting “Samba! Samba!” They applauded our moves, oohed and ahhed as we passed the ball around, and cheered wildly when we scored our fourth goal. It was truly remarkable, the sportsmanship and love for good soccer that they showed that day. I have to say,
in all the years since, I have never seen a more gracious, fair audience.

  As the final minutes of the game ticked away, and we retained our insurmountable lead, I finally started to comprehend what was happening. Brazil was going to be the world champion! After nearly thirty years of disappointments, of near misses and national trauma, we would now get that elusive first title. This was amazing, a real honor. But what really got me emotional, as I continued to run around the field and try to keep my Swedish opponent in check, was the thought of my mom and dad back home in Baurú. All our family and friends would be there in our house, laughing and cheering around the radio, just like they had in 1950. Except this time, they’d get to celebrate! Instead of tears, there would be laughter! And they would be cheering my name!

  These thoughts, which I’d been able to suppress until that moment, were too much for me to bear. With each step, I felt my feet getting lighter and lighter. And on the game’s very final play, I guess I just kind of snapped. A ball came looping over from the side of the field. I soared into the air, timing my leap perfectly. I kept my eyes wide open, just as Dad had spent all those hours teaching me back in Baurú, during all those silly drills. And as the ball went in—a goal worthy of Dondinho, a header, his specialty—everything just faded to black.

  I passed out. Right there on the field, directly in front of the goal.

  Mercifully, the referee blew the whistle, declaring the game over, and Brazil the world champions. My header had made the final score Brazil 5, Sweden 2.