by Pelé
The managers agreed. But when the meeting finally took place, it was a one-sided affair. In the political and social climate of those years, in Brazil as in many other countries, anyone in a position of authority acted as if their voice was the only one that mattered. The word of our managers and bosses simply could not be questioned. So, even though it was a team meeting, the managers did all the talking that day. They told us, somewhat testily, that everything would be fine: All we had to do was win a few more games in England and then we’d go home and be honored as champions once again, so could we all please stop the complaining?
I remember walking out of that meeting and looking over at Garrincha. He shook his head, sadly. I just shrugged. Neither of us said a word. This was itself a sign of things to come—and the lessons I still had to learn. But we didn’t know that then, so we just quietly packed our bags. Like lambs to the slaughter, off we went to England.
3
From the first second of our first game, we realized we had more than our own internal problems to deal with.
At the previous two World Cups, Brazil had dazzled the world with our flamboyant, wide-open, constantly attacking style of play. Now, in England, we heard the referees were going to try to level the playing field. They were going to be more tolerant of physical defense and call far fewer fouls. This was a change that would favor the Europeans, who were generally bigger and stronger than the South American players, and had spent the last eight years devising techniques to disrupt our attack. Lest this sound like yet another conspiracy theory, or perhaps sour grapes on my part, I’m not the only person who thought the South American teams got a raw deal in 1966. Antonio Rattin, the number ten for the Argentine team that year, decades later was still calling it “the most violent World Cup of all time.” Brian Viner, an English journalist, wrote in The Independent of London in 2009 that “several players (for Brazil), but Pelé in particular, suffered some of the most egregiously vindictive man-marking ever seen.”
Now, I never shied away from physical play. We used to beat the living tar out of one another on the streets of Baurú! Once my professional career began, I was usually the highest scorer on the field—and, let’s be honest, everybody wanted to say they shut down Pelé. Defenses targeted me and assigned one and sometimes two or even three defenders to shadow me throughout the game. There is film of me being collared around my neck, thrown to the ground, hacked at and taking cleats directly to the knees at full speed. My goodness, there were games I played with Santos in which, if today’s standards of refereeing were applied, the opposing team would have had only five or six players left on the field—the others would have all received red cards!
Fair enough—that’s the way the sport was played back then. It was a different, more physical game, in part because there was no TV. Nowadays, they’ve got high-definition cameras watching every corner of the field at all times. If the referees miss a foul, both the referees and players know they’ll get an earful about it later. They’ll get punished or banned retroactively, and maybe even suffer lasting damage to their reputations. Back then, however, only we and God could see most of the sins on the field. Some defenders had an awful lot of confessing to do on Sundays!
I hardly ever took this personally. After all, my defenders were usually just following orders from their coaches, and trying to earn a living for their families. Dondinho had always told me to respect my opponents. This certainly didn’t stop me from throwing an elbow every now and then to defend myself. But I complained as little as possible and almost always played cleanly—in twenty years of professional soccer, I was never ejected from a game for dirty play or a hard foul. But everything in sports is a question of degrees—not even the toughest player can survive without some protection from the officials, especially if he or she is in the business of scoring goals. And in 1966, it was as if the referees had swallowed their whistles.
In that first game, against Bulgaria, we might as well have been playing in a dark alley back in Baurú, with knives and clubs and not a referee (or even a concerned parent) in sight. The Bulgarians came prepared for violence. The defender assigned to me spent the entire game kicking hard at my feet and ankles, and tripping me right in front of the referee.
“Hey! You big oaf!” I’d scream back at the defender. “This is ridiculous!” But he didn’t understand a word of Portuguese, of course, and unfortunately I’d failed to brush up on my Bulgarian vulgarities. So he would just frown wordlessly back at me, and the referee always seemed to be looking the other way.
In the end, some of the fouls were so obvious that the referee had no choice but to call them. I scored on a free kick following one such foul in the first half, and Garrincha did the same in the second half. We walked away with a hard-fought 2–0 win.
It didn’t feel like a victory, though. The headline the next day back home in Brazil was not the final score, but: A HUNTED PELÉ LEAVES THE FIELD LIMPING. All our other opponents now knew exactly what they could get away with. A pattern had been set. And it was, sadly, the last game Garrincha and I would ever play together.
4
I was beaten and battered, and in obvious pain, after the Bulgaria game. My right knee was killing me. But I was still preparing hard for our next match, determined not to miss any games like I had in 1958 or 1962. So I was shocked when one of the team managers informed me that I was going to sit out against Hungary.
“We want you to rest, Pelé,” he told me. “We’d rather sit you now, protect you from all this rough play, and have you at full health for a game that matters.”
A game that matters? What about the Marvelous Magyars, the team that had eliminated Brazil in 1954 and made it to the quarterfinals in 1962 as well? If we didn’t win that game, there wouldn’t be any games that mattered!
I was outraged. But, again, the pronouncements of team officials were treated as the final word. And I didn’t want to create the impression that I thought I was different from anybody else. I didn’t want to look like a prima donna. So I bit my tongue.
Hungary destroyed us, 3–1. The result shocked the world—it was the first World Cup game Brazil had lost since 1954 in Switzerland, also versus the Hungarians. I watched from the bench, helpless and heartbroken.
Our defeat sent the Brazilian team officials into a frenzy. Once again, just as in 1950, all of our hubris was abruptly turned on its head, and transformed into an all-consuming panic. To advance out of the round of group play, we would likely have to defeat our final opponent, Portugal, by a margin of several goals. The team managers put me back on the field, but Garrincha, Gylmar, and Djalma Santos were all relegated to the bench. Orlando, who played on our 1958 squad but hadn’t played in a single World Cup match since then, was now in. All told, there were seven changes from the previous game. It was crazy, but once again—are you seeing a pattern yet?—we all kept quiet.
Once the Portugal game started, I was kicked into oblivion by their defenders, who openly targeted my lame right knee. On one play, a defender tripped me. As I was stumbling to the ground, he came at me again, feetfirst, cutting me down completely. Everybody in the entire stadium stood up screaming for a foul. Dr. Gosling and Mário Américo, the same duo who had healed my knee with the hot towels in Sweden in 1958, came sprinting out on the field. But this time there would be no miracles. I had torn a ligament in my knee.
Dr. Gosling and Mário Américo carried me off the field, with my arms draped over their shoulders and my legs suspended in the air. I couldn’t put any weight at all on my right leg. But the rules of World Cup soccer at that time prohibited any substitutions or replacements, even if a player got hurt. I didn’t want Brazil to be down a man in such a critical match. So after a few minutes, I went back on the field. I limped around, totally ineffective, practically hopping on one leg for the rest of the game.
Brazil lost—a 3–1 result once again, eliminating us from the World Cup.
In the end
, it wouldn’t be us who collected the trophy from Queen Elizabeth—but the English themselves, led by the heroics of Bobby Moore and their coach, Sir Alf Ramsey. I thought England’s triumph was well deserved, and befitting the birthplace of modern soccer. Unfortunately, I never would get my chance to play at Wembley, not even in a friendly game. That omission remains one of the few true regrets of my career.
As I hopped around the field against Portugal, staggering and limping like a wounded animal, I became angrier and angrier. I was mad at the hubris of our coaches and officials. I was upset with the way Brazilian politics had intruded upon our preparations. I was furious at the referees for not protecting us. Above all, I was disappointed with myself. I was almost always healthy when playing for Santos, but I had now been badly injured during all three World Cups in which I’d participated. This couldn’t be a coincidence, I thought. And after that game, I called the reporters over and announced my decision to never participate in another World Cup.
On our way home to Brazil from London, our flight was delayed by several hours. As with everything else during that 1966 World Cup, the team officials gave us no explanation as to why—they expected us to just sit there, docile and unquestioning. We arrived in Rio long after midnight. Those of us based in or near São Paulo were rushed directly into a waiting airplane. Only later did we discover the reason for the delays: The team officials were afraid we would be lynched by angry mobs upon our return. Their fears were unfounded—hardly anybody showed up. But the whole episode did reinforce the choice I had made. World Cup soccer seemed like something I could definitely live without.
5
“Thank God you’re OK, Dico!” Mom exclaimed, near tears, when I got back home to Santos. “My knees hurt from praying for you so much!”
The 1966 World Cup was available on television in some parts of the world—but the Nascimento family wanted no part of it. No way. In the decade that I’d been playing professional soccer, Dona Celeste had never attended one of my games in person, much less watched one on TV. Most of the time, Dad couldn’t stand to see the games either—I think that, for different reasons, it was too emotional for both of them. On almost every game day, with the dedication of the most devoted pilgrim, Mom would go to church and spend the duration of the match praying that I wouldn’t get hurt like Dondinho had. Over the years, I think she suffered more damage to her knees than I did!
Mom and Dad weren’t the only ones who suffered. In fact, everybody back home seemed to support my decision to retire from international play, including the newest member of our family: Rosemeri Cholbi, my bride.
I’d met Rose many years before—right after the 1958 Cup, in fact. Santos was playing Corinthians, one of our biggest rivals. Brazilian teams usually put their players in a kind of quarantine the night before games—it’s called a concentração in Portuguese, literally a “concentration”—and the goal is to isolate players from any distractions, such as . . . well, such as members of the fairer sex. But that’s easier said than done, especially when Brazilian soccer players are involved, and a group of us staged a jailbreak that night. We sneaked down to the Santos gym to watch a local women’s basketball match. A few of the team’s players came over to talk to us, and I was surprised when one of them plopped down right next to me.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re Pelé, right?”
“That’s right,” I said, thrilled that she had recognized me.
“Don’t beat Corinthians too badly tomorrow.”
And with a curt smile, she walked away, returning to her team’s bench.
It was the shortest of exchanges, but I was immediately smitten. She had this gorgeous, long, flowing brown hair, and—most intriguingly of all—she seemed to possess a confidence and poise that I hadn’t really seen around Santos before. The next afternoon, when our game began, I found myself scanning the stands looking for this girl, when I really should have been paying attention to the action on the field. I don’t remember whether we won or not, but the day still ended in disappointment—Rose wasn’t there.
A few days later, I was walking down the street in Santos and happened to spot the same group of basketball players. My heart leapt. Rose wasn’t with them, but the girls—giggling the whole time, of course—did tell me her name, the record store where she worked, and her age: fourteen. That was pretty young, but I was seventeen myself at the time, so it didn’t seem like a deal breaker. After donning my only good pressed shirt and a nice pair of long pants, I strolled into the record store as nonchalantly as a teenage boy possibly can.
“Hello again,” I said.
“Hi.”
“Do you remember me?”
She nodded, smiling, seeming a bit more shy than the first time.
“Tell me,” I said, “why did you want Corinthians to win if you’re from Santos?”
“Because I support Corinthians,” she replied. “Except I don’t really like soccer.”
I don’t really like soccer. You might think these words would have sent me, of all people, running right out of the store! But precisely the opposite happened. I went into an even deeper swoon. At that moment, in the wake of my Swedish adventures, Rose seemed like the one person on the planet who wasn’t impressed by what I had done on the field. She was clearly interested in Edson, not in Pelé.
Years passed, and I fell in love with Rose. No matter how many thousands of miles away I traveled, no matter whether we won or lost, I’d come back and there she was at home with her parents in Santos—like a rock, never changing. Our courtship was a drawn-out, very traditional affair. Rose insisted that I meet her parents right away, and they expressed their wishes that we keep things as private as possible. This was difficult—Santos was a small city, and I was who I was. But Rose never came to my games, which was hardly a sacrifice for her. When we’d go out to see a movie, Rose’s aunt would come with us. The two of them would go into the cinema first. Once the lights had gone down, I’d quietly slip in and sit next to her. Our deceptions worked—nobody ever noticed that Pelé was sitting in the same theater.
Rose refused to marry me for the longest time—she was too young, she said. But in the months prior to the 1966 Cup, she finally gave in. We’d been seeing each other for more than seven years by that point. I was a two-time world champion with Brazil, Santos had won several titles, I had begun to make some real money . . . and she just didn’t care. She still didn’t like soccer, and she still didn’t want public attention. Our engagement eventually became public, of course, and there was all kinds of buzz about where the “king of soccer” would get married. Some people suggested the Maracanã Stadium in Rio! One report said the Pope himself would officiate the ceremony. But true to form, and Rose’s wishes, we held our nuptials in a house that I had bought for my parents in Santos. The ceremony was simple, officiated by a local minister, and attended by our families and just a few friends.
Even when we tried to keep things simple, though, it didn’t work. There were hordes of media outside, snapping photos. Still, I went outside, smiled and waved. This, as I always told Rose, was our life. And it brought us far more good than anything else.
6
The first offer came from Tetra Pak, a Swedish packaging company. In the years after the 1958 World Cup, Sweden retained a fond place in my heart—and I always felt very welcome when Santos or the Brazilian team played friendly games in Swedish cities. But I was still a bit surprised in 1961 or so when Santos team officials first came to me and said Tetra Pak wanted me to “endorse” their product.
I telephoned Dondinho right away.
“What do you think, Dad?”
“I don’t understand,” he said, sounding very concerned. “You’ve already got a salary.”
“Yes, but this would be in addition to that,” I explained.
“What is it they want you to do?”
“They’ll pay me to say I like their product.”
This blew Dondinho’s mind. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re an athlete, not an actor. Are they really going to pay you for that?”
It didn’t make much sense to me either. At least not at first. American athletes had been endorsing products since at least the days of Babe Ruth, but in Brazil—as in much of the rest of the world—the concept was still quite new. Only the afterglow of that first World Cup championship made such a thing possible. I suppose people wanted to share in the feeling of being a champion, and buying products I liked was a way for them to do that. I was blessed with my mother’s smile, as well. Surely that was just as important.
Still, I had some doubts. I worried that, if something I endorsed wasn’t very good, people would be upset with me personally. This actually happened on a couple of occasions in the early days—I’d have people approach me on the street in Santos and complain that a product hadn’t worked right. I’d always apologize profusely, and try to follow up with the company.
Despite such misgivings, we accepted the Tetra Pak offer. It would prove to be one of the best and longest-lasting relationships I ever had. That opened the floodgates: Seemingly overnight, I had so many offers from companies, both Brazilian and foreign, that I didn’t know what to do with them all. I ended up hiring people just to deal with the endorsements and other business offers. One of them was my brother Zoca, who had played a few years for Santos’ reserve team before deciding that soccer wasn’t really his thing. He had always been superior to me in academics, and he went to law school, and became one of my most trusted advisers.