Why Soccer Matters

by Pelé

  I lay there, without moving, for a good while. Garrincha, sweet soul that he was, was the first player to run over to help me. He lifted up my legs, thinking this might somehow send blood back to my head.

  When I regained consciousness, there was sheer pandemonium. I saw my teammates laughing, hugging, and jumping up and down. Hundreds of people had run onto the field to celebrate with us. I stood up, saw Didi and Garrincha, and then the tears began to roll down my face. I’ve always been a real crybaby—surely you’ve figured this out by now—but never in my life did the tears come as freely as they did at that moment. I was overwhelmed with thoughts of my family, my country, and the sheer release that came with finally being able to let my emotions go. I continued to sob, utterly inconsolable, on the shoulders of my teammates as people kept pouring out of the stands. Reporters, fans and police were all grabbing me, patting me on the back and on the head, smiling ear to ear and yelling things in languages I couldn’t understand.

  My knees collapsed again, and I began to fall to the ground. Then I realized I was being lifted, as if by some kind of invisible force. It was my teammates, putting me on their shoulders and parading me around the field as I wept and wept.

  Gylmar reached up, squeezed my leg and smiled.

  “Go ahead and cry, boy! It’s good for you!”

  Somebody grabbed a Swedish flag, and then we paraded that around the field in honor of our amazing hosts. When my teammates put me back down, I ran around the grass, screaming and laughing and crying, shouting at anybody who would listen: “I’ve got to tell my dad! I’ve got to tell my dad!”

  20

  Of course, there was no Skype in 1958—and no cell phones either. So I’d have to wait three whole days to tell Dad all about our adventure in Sweden.

  The euphoria of the game melded seamlessly into a drawn-out, days-long celebration. While we were still on the field, the Swedish monarch, King Gustaf, came down to shake our hands and congratulate us. He was very dignified and gracious—just as all the Swedes had been. Even the Swedish players were generous in their praise after the game. The defender who had been charged with covering me, Sigge Parling, told the press: “After the fifth goal, even I wanted to cheer for him.”

  That night, we had a huge meal at our hotel, where we stuffed ourselves and some people drank champagne from the Jules Rimet trophy, named for the FIFA president who had organized the first Cup back in 1930. When the time finally came for us to fly back home, our first stop on Brazilian soil was Recife, where thousands of people had come to greet us a few weeks earlier. This time, of course, the crowd was much larger—despite a driving tropical rain. As soon as the plane’s doors opened, the crowd erupted in cheers. We came out, and they lifted us up on their shoulders.

  When we landed in Rio later that day, the crowd went mad with joy. We were exhausted by this point—none of us had really slept since the night before the game—but there was no way to stop now. The streets were packed with people. They paraded us around on fire engines. People dropped firecrackers, shredded newspapers, pretty much anything they could find out of office and apartment windows. Then the team officials whisked us back to a local magazine’s office where, to our surprise, our families were waiting for us.

  Dondinho and Dona Celeste were standing there, smiling with pride. Both of them were trying to keep a stiff upper lip and control their emotions with so many people watching. Did they succeed? Well, let’s just say that my genes came from somewhere!

  “Everybody is so proud of you, Dico!” my mom said, gasping the words, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Even your teachers—they all came to see me and say how they always knew you would be such a success.”

  That was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard! But it was a great moment for my family—I saw that my mom now understood all the good that soccer could bring us.

  There was a party at the presidential palace, where Juscelino himself drank champagne from the Cup. From there, it was on to São Paulo for yet another parade and celebration. After a quick stopover in Santos, I was finally allowed to go back to Baurú.

  By this point, I was hoping that I just would be able to go home and rest. Fat chance! The atmosphere in my hometown was just as crazy as it had been in São Paulo or Rio, with one major difference—here, the celebration was focused entirely upon me. As our plane touched down at the Baurú airstrip—the same one I’d visited so many times over the years, and where I’d seen the wrecked glider way back when—I could see that literally the entire town had turned out to see us. Hordes of people were pressed up against the fences on the side of the runway, waving and cheering.

  I stepped out of the plane, smiled and waved. It was hard to believe that I was the same kid who, just two years earlier, had donned long pants and boarded a bus for Santos, his knees knocking in fear. My past and present felt like a dream—both equally unreal. But all the usual suspects were there—my friends from the street, my brother and sister, my parents. Even the mayor had turned out to give me a big hug.

  “Baurú has been waiting for you, Pelé!” he declared.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. The mayor motioned for me to board a flatbed truck for yet another victory parade, which ended at a stand in the main square. I was given trophies, medals and gifts, as the crowd laughed and applauded. One of the medals was supposed to be presented by my mom. But she was too overwhelmed with emotions, so she just walked up onstage and gave me a tender kiss on the cheek.

  Two of the gifts I received were particularly memorable. One was a new car—a Romi-Isetta. It was a little wisp of a vehicle, with just three wheels, but having any automobile was an enormously big deal in Brazil at that time. The total price for an imported American car was about twenty thousand dollars; this in a country where the average minimum wage was about thirty dollars a month. I was honored. There was one slight catch: I was a minor, so I couldn’t actually drive it! There was also some doubt about whether the thing was sturdy enough to make it all the way down to Santos. So I gave the car to Dondinho.

  The funniest gift of all was actually a television—a big green and yellow monstrosity, painted with the colors of Brazil, that had been presented to us while we were still in Sweden. The dilemma with the TV was similar to the one with the car—in Baurú, as in most of Brazil, there was still no working broadcast signal. So it turned into a kind of trophy; one that I still have in my home near Santos today.

  All these gifts, and all the celebration, had another effect: They began to create the impression that I was rich. Once the celebration was over, and I went back with my family to spend a few quiet days at our house, our doorbell never stopped ringing. Old friends and other people were suddenly asking for money or favors; whether I had any resources for business ideas; and so on. In truth, there was hardly any new money to speak of—I would continue to play for Santos at the same salary as before.

  Nonetheless, nobody believed me when I said I didn’t have any cash. After all, I was on the front pages of newspapers and magazines all over the world. One of the world’s most famous magazines, Paris Match, ran a cover story about me, declaring that there was a new king of soccer. After that, people in Brazil started calling me O Rei—the King. Many people assumed I was living like one, too.

  I felt overwhelmed. The world had changed, but I felt like I hadn’t. I was just a kid who loved playing soccer. I had discovered my true talent, and I had gone where it led me. I’d had some success. I’d had the honor of winning a championship for my country. But I didn’t understand why everybody now seemed to want something from me—not just cash, but words of encouragement or a favor for a nephew. Some people only seemed to want to give me things! It was crazy. I tried to smile as big as I could, and make people happy with my answers to their questions. But, during those first days in Baurú, I began to realize that people were constantly watching, and that my life was no longer my own. That feeling has been with me ever since.<
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  21

  All these years later, I still smile when I think about that 1958 team. We had something truly special: a collection of phenomenal individual talents who played with total abandon. We were almost too young, too innocent to realize the scale of what we were doing. That first game against the Soviets signaled the beginning of one of the most remarkable streaks in professional sports: For the following eight years, whenever Garrincha and I were on the field together playing for Brazil, our team never lost a single game.

  Eleven members of the 1958 team, including myself and Garrincha, would go on to play in the next World Cup, which took place in Chile in 1962. Once again, I got hurt, in just the second game, and I missed the rest of the tournament. But history would also repeat itself in far more pleasant ways: Brazil won that 1962 Cup, giving us back-to-back titles. That tournament is remembered in Brazil, quite rightly, as Garrincha’s championship.

  Life would get more complicated in coming years—things would never again be quite as simple, or quite as pure, as they were in 1958.

  But there was always one thing that would make my worries melt away.

  A few days after returning home to Baurú from the World Cup in Sweden, I happened to walk past one of the places where the Sete de Setembro crew used to play. There were a bunch of boys of about eight or ten years old, kicking the ball around, laughing and having fun, just like my friends and I used to do. I asked if I could join them, and they said yes.

  So I went home, changed out of my long pants, and put on some shorts. When I got back to the field, I removed my shoes, and played barefoot, just like they were. All of us played together for hours, until the sun went down, and our mothers called us home. Just a couple of boys from Baurú.

  MEXICO, 1970

  1

  I called the reporters over to my locker, and said I had an announcement to make.

  “I will never play in another World Cup,” I declared. “If soccer means war, then I will hang my shoes on the wall, and forget that I ever played.”

  The date was July 19, 1966—eight years after that first championship in Sweden. The place was Liverpool, England. I was still only twenty-five years old—not exactly retirement age. But I felt about fifty years old that day because of the pain in my body, and the deep scars and bruises on my legs. Indeed, it felt like I’d been to war—and lost. Although I would continue to play club soccer for Santos, I announced that I was done forever with the Brazilian national team.

  “That’s it,” I said, as the reporters gaped at me, scribbling furiously. “This is the last time you’ll see me in the uniform of Brazil.”

  Making a major decision like that in the heat of the moment is never a good idea. In fact, it was downright dumb. But I had never been so furious, so disappointed, and so fed up with soccer as I was that day.

  If only I could somehow go back in time and talk to that twenty-five-year-old guy! I’d tell him to relax a little bit, and stop being so dramatic! I’d tell him things are never quite as bad as they seem after a big defeat. I’d tell him some adversity can make your life worthwhile, and make your triumphs even sweeter.

  Above all, I’d tell him that there were still some things that even Pelé, the so-called “king” of soccer, hadn’t learned yet. Including maybe the most important of all the lessons that soccer has to teach.

  2

  In the months prior to that day in Liverpool, I had been having a recurring dream—a fantastic, deeply satisfying dream. In it, I was standing on the field at Wembley Stadium, the grand palace of soccer in England—one of the few major global venues I’d never played in before. Everybody on the Brazilian national team was there with me: exhausted, sweaty, but happy. And we were about to be presented the Jules Rimet Cup by Queen Elizabeth II herself, in celebration of yet another world championship—our third, an unprecedented feat.

  Just as the queen was about to hand us the trophy, I’d wake up with a start. I’d lie there happy for a moment, certain the dream was going to become reality. And then I’d jump out of bed and go train for hours, just to make sure it did.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one having such delusions. Throughout Brazil, many people were treating the 1966 World Cup like a victory lap, rather than the kind of prize you had to work hard for. After our consecutive titles of 1958 and 1962, many of our Brazilian coaches and players seemed to think we would just fly over to England, drink some tea, kick the ball around a bit and collect the trophy, thank you very much. Newspapers were full of stories about our impending triumph, and how our soccer prowess showed that Brazilians were superior in every way. And if you’re thinking that sounds a lot like the attitude that got us into trouble at the Maracanã in 1950, you’re exactly right. I guess two championships had allowed Brazil to fall back into some of its old bad habits.

  In fact, some of the coincidences were eerie. The insecurity of our politicians was helping to drive the hype once again. All the optimism of the late 1950s, the years of President Juscelino Kubitschek and our great triumph in Sweden, had suddenly come crashing down. It was just the latest cycle of great hope followed by great disappointment that, sadly, has always seemed to define politics in Brazil.

  Juscelino’s “Fifty years of progress in five” plan did succeed in getting lots of new roads and factories built, as he had promised. Our glorious new capital, Brasilia, opened as planned in 1960. But there are no miracles in this world, and the construction binge seemed to create as many new problems for Brazil as it solved. The government printed a bunch of money to pay for all these projects, and Brazilians began to darkly joke that now we had “Fifty years of inflation in five.” Every time you went to the supermarket, or out to eat, the bill seemed to rise. In 1964, prices doubled in just one year, making people furious.

  Meanwhile, there was another issue complicating things—it was the sixties! Seemingly everywhere in the world, it was a turbulent time of protests, strikes, revolutions and free love. This was just as true in Brazil—and not only the free love part. Poor Brazilians were moving out of farms and small towns like Três Corações and into the big cities, hoping they’d find a better life for themselves and their kids, but usually having to settle for favelas on the hills and precarious riverbanks of places like Rio and São Paulo. Meanwhile, young people were demanding greater freedoms, and a bigger slice of the pie for themselves.

  All of these demands would have been tough on any politician. But Juscelino’s successors didn’t seem up to the challenge. One of them resigned, got drunk and boarded a boat for Europe after just eight months on the job. That left behind his vice president, a guy named João “Jango” Goulart, who seemed nice enough when we met him in Brasilia to celebrate the World Cup title of 1962. But as time went by, Jango appointed some communist advisers and began speaking of redistributing land to the poor in Brazil’s cities. That didn’t sit very well with the elite. In 1964, the military staged a coup, and Brazil became a conservative dictatorship once again.

  As I’ve said, soccer is never immune from such things—especially not in Brazil. As we began preparing for the World Cup of 1966, we were under tremendous pressure from a new military government that desperately wanted us to help them cover up the turbulent divisions in our society. The soldiers understood, all too well, that soccer unites like nothing else can. They believed that a third consecutive championship was the key to getting life in Brazil back to “normal” once again—and maybe even turning back the clock to the simpler, less demanding era of the 1950s.

  Am I getting carried away? Does it seem like I’m blaming our politicians for everything? OK, fair enough—after all, it is the players who take the field, and ultimately win or lose the games. But consider some of the decisions the Brazilian soccer team managers made that year, some of which were so bizarre that they could be explained only by the crazy politics of the mid-1960s. For example, instead of inviting twenty-two or twenty-eight players to try out for the
Brazilian team, as was customary, that year our managers invited forty-four players! This was amazing. Why on earth would they do such a thing? Well, they divided us into four separate squads of eleven each. Then they separately sent each squad to cities and towns all over the country to “practice”—to big metropolises like São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, as well as smaller locales like Três Rios, Caxambú and Teresópolis. Practicing separately, and rotating towns every few days, did absolutely nothing to prepare us for the World Cup. But that wasn’t the point. We were there primarily to entertain, to unite, to dish out favors to local politicians, and to make people forget about the country’s problems. We were the classic “bread and circus.”

  Following that sideshow, the team officials—again, more concerned with projecting a happy face to the world than actually getting us ready to play—scheduled an exhausting series of warm-up matches for us in Spain, Scotland, Sweden and elsewhere. The games took place in a variety of different climates and with lots of travel days in between. When it came time for us to leave for Europe, we didn’t yet have a team—we had a massive, somewhat awkward collection of individuals. Sure, some of the names were the same: Garrincha was still there, as were Gylmar and Djalma Santos. But eight years had passed since Sweden, an eternity in sports. Everybody was older, and not always able to still perform at soccer’s highest level.

  Even when all the players were finally together, the coaches couldn’t decide on a starting lineup. The same group never played together twice, and sometimes we’d change five, six or seven starters from one game to the next—an unforgiveable sin, especially at the World Cup level. When we could manage only a 1–1 tie against Scotland, I think panic began to set in. None of our dreams of Wembley or the queen were going to come true with us playing that way. There was quite a bit of finger-pointing among the players after that game, and lots of anger. The older guys on the team—Nilton Santos, Zito and Bellini, the captain—went to the team managers and said we needed to all get in a room and talk things out.