by Pelé
The new chief of the military government, Emílio Médici, was a conservative, a hard-liner—and a big-time soccer fan. He followed the ups and downs of the Brazilian team for many years while rising through the army. But we were still very surprised when Médici gave a newspaper interview saying he wanted to see his favorite player, Dario José dos Santos, on the Brazilian national team at the 1970 World Cup.
Dario, known as “Dada Maravilha” or “Marvelous Dada,” was in fact a very good player. He would go down as one of the most prolific goal scorers in Brazilian history. But we already had more than our share of offensive firepower on the team, and we had worked very hard to develop a core nucleus of players that knew and trusted one another. So, at that late stage, there wasn’t really any room for Dario on our squad.
Why would Médici say such a thing? Perhaps because he was a true fan of Dario’s, and the sport. But there were other things going on in Brazil at that time, things that were only increasing the pressure on our team to be successful at the World Cup in Mexico. The military dictatorship had taken a much more authoritarian and repressive turn in the late 1960s, and was now censoring media and purging universities and other institutions of suspected “subversives.” Thousands of Brazilians were forced into exile, and the unofficial slogan of those years was Brazil: ame-o ou deixe-o. “Love it or leave it.” Worst of all, the military stepped up its horrible practice of abducting and torturing people. During those first few months of 1970, as we were busy training and preparing for the World Cup, a twenty-two-year-old university student named Dilma Rousseff was being tortured in a jail cell in southern Brazil, hung upside down from a metal rod by her knees while electric shocks were applied to her body.
When we first started hearing such stories, we almost couldn’t believe them—they sounded like things that would happen in Nazi Germany, not in our beloved Brazil. This was still a few years before the coup by Augusto Pinochet in Chile—or the notorious “Dirty War” period in Argentina—illustrated to the world just how brutal South American dictatorships could be. Soon, though, some players and members of the Brazilian coaching staff were hearing firsthand accounts of the horrors. While we still didn’t know the scale of what was happening, we could no longer doubt its existence. As a team, we had long discussions among the players about what was going on. Should we say something? Should we make a protest of some kind?
We decided in the end that we were soccer players, not politicians. We didn’t think it was our place to speak up about what was happening. Zagallo put Dario on the team, as requested. And we all kept quiet—at least for a while.
13
Of all the World Cups I’ve attended, Mexico 1970 was by far the craziest—and the most fun. There were a great many challenges, including the heat, the altitude, and the chaos that seemed to surround our team at all times. But the raucous, highly knowledgeable Mexican fans loved us—and thank God, because if we hadn’t had them on our side, all might well have been lost.
To cite just one example of the fans’ passion: After the Mexican team crushed El Salvador by a score of 4–0 in group play, tens of thousands of people surged into the streets of Mexico City, ignoring the pouring rain. The crowd scaled the wall in front of the hotel where the international press was staying, and knocked loose a twelve-foot-tall fiberglass soccer ball that had been manufactured just for the World Cup. Screaming and shouting with joy, the crowd rolled the giant ball down the street for two miles to the city’s main square, the Zócalo. There, they happily tore their prize into shreds and handed out the pieces as delighted souvenirs.
Several teams could never quite adjust to the conditions. Some of the venues really were quite difficult—games in the host city of Toluca, for example, were played at a staggering nine thousand feet above sea level, about twice the altitude of Denver, Colorado. Some of the games started at noon, in the brutal glare of the Mexican sun, in an effort by FIFA to maximize the TV audience back in Europe. Some players simply couldn’t take the heat. In a few matches, including one between Germany and Peru, some observers noticed that the teams seemed to be playing mostly in the tiny sliver of shade provided by the stadium’s grandstands.
It was the first World Cup held in Latin America since Brazil in 1950, and the Europeans, in particular, were wary of what exotic ills and hazards might await them. The English brought their own bottled water from home, and even tried to import bacon and sausage, plus their own bus and card tables. But things didn’t quite work out—Mexican law banned everyone, including soccer players, from importing food that might transmit hoof-and-mouth disease. All the English sausages were destroyed at the airport, and the team had to survive on spicy Mexican salchichas instead.
Brazil was not immune from the anything-goes atmosphere. Shortly before we arrived, Mexican authorities arrested nine people whom they said were part of a complex international plot to kidnap me. After the arrests, I was ordered by team officials to sleep in a different hotel room each night. Security at our team facilities was increased, and I had a guard assigned to me at all times. It all sounds terrifying now, and I guess in some ways it was. But at the time I didn’t think about it very much. Like I’ve said, in those years, you had to kind of embrace the chaos. So I did. And, as usual, I slept like a baby.
Everything Zagallo and the team management did helped us to feel like we were living in a lush, quiet, drama-free oasis. Our team was the first of the sixteen competing countries to arrive, landing in Mexico about a month before our first game. Officially, our early arrival was supposed to help us adjust to the altitude in Guadalajara, where we would be playing our group matches. But I think the managers mostly just wanted to get us into one place and make us comfortable, to avoid the Carnival-like chaos of 1966. They wanted us to spend time together, to practice together, to bond.
By that point, the same core group had already been playing together for a year and a half. On the field, I sometimes knew what move my teammates would make before they did, and vice versa. Once we got to Mexico, an even deeper bond took hold off the field as well. We ate our meals together, we watched soccer on television together, and we began to feel like true brothers.
One night, I was on the phone with Rose, and she told me that the family was getting together every day to pray for us. I thought: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we gathered a prayer group on the team too? I explained the idea first to Carlos Alberto, the captain of that 1970 team and one of my teammates from Santos. He thought it was a fantastic plan. Then we talked to Antonio do Passo, one of the team managers, and we were soon joined by Tostão, Piazza, and our venerable trainer, Mário Américo. Before long, nearly all of the forty or so players and members of the delegation were gathering every night after dinner to pray together. It wasn’t compulsory, of course—but almost everybody came anyway, regardless of whether they were Catholic or not.
We found something to pray for every day: the sick, the war in Vietnam, the political situation back home, the health of a loved one. We never prayed to win the World Cup. We asked only that no one get seriously injured, and that God help bring all of us close together and keep our families safe.
That 1970 team, frankly, didn’t have as much talent as the squad we had assembled in Sweden in 1958. We had weaknesses that were there for everyone to see. Few people back in Brazil expected us to win the championship—some journalists didn’t even think we’d make it out of group play. But, as we prayed and spent all of our days together, I saw something happening that, in more than a decade of professional soccer, I’d never quite seen before. In our practices, and then our games, our performance was even greater than the sum of our individual abilities. We began playing phenomenally well. And we realized that we really had something special on our hands.
This was the big lesson of soccer that, prior to that 1970 Cup, I hadn’t fully learned. In Mexico, amid the prayer sessions, the practices, the team meetings, the meals, the jokes, the camaraderie, I finally re
alized the full potential of what a group of players can do together. I saw the true power of a team.
14
Another funny thing about the 1970 World Cup: It was like a procession of the most horrifying, disturbing ghosts from Brazil’s soccer past. We’d have to confront our fears, and slay them one by one, if we wanted to be crowned champions once again.
The first game was no exception.
Our opponent was Czechoslovakia—the team against which I’d suffered my severe muscle strain in the 1962 Cup, putting me out of the rest of the tournament. Despite the trauma from my injury, I also remembered that game for one of the most outstanding demonstrations of sportsmanship I ever saw during my career. After I got hurt, and stayed on the field, the Czech players could easily have “gone in for the kill” by targeting my injury or otherwise being rough with me. That would have sent me off the field, and put their team in a better position to win. But it also could possibly have caused a longer-term or even a permanent injury to me. So instead, the Czechs opted to gently neutralize me for the rest of the game. Three players in particular—Masopust, Popluhár and Lála—would back off of me just a bit whenever the ball was passed to me. They sought to prevent me from doing anything dangerous, yes, but they also let me finish my plays. That game ended in a goalless tie. Even today, I remain very grateful to the Czechs for the gallant way they treated me.
Oddsmakers had rated the Czech team as one of the strongest in the Cup in 1970, and we weren’t about to take them lightly, given how rigorously they’d played us in the past. But we had access to videotape now, and I spent considerable time watching games from Europe. In the tape, and in friendly matches we’d played, I noticed that European goalies had lately adopted a new technique—they often strayed far from their goal when the ball was on the other side of the field, almost acting like another defender. So when the game started, and I saw that the Czech goalkeeper Viktor was doing precisely that, I decided to try my luck.
I was jogging forward, about to cross the halfway line and about sixty-five yards from the opponents’ goal, when I lofted the ball up into the air. Right away, I could hear people in the crowd start to murmur—“What on earth is Pelé trying to do?” But as the ball arced back down toward the earth, and bent inward toward the right goalpost, and Viktor sprinted in a panic back toward the goal, it all became clear. The crowd’s murmur turned into a roar.
As I raced down the field, I could see the ball curving, curving . . . and, alas, it rolled just outside of the goalpost. No goal. The crowd groaned in disappointment, then began to applaud in appreciation of the effort. As for Viktor, he looked relieved but somewhat disturbed, like he’d just survived a horrible car accident.
Oddly enough, some people say that shot was the most memorable single moment of the 1970 Cup. In fact, even today when people meet me they say it’s one of the plays from my career they remember best. It’s just a shame the damn ball didn’t go in the goal!
Whatever disappointment I may have felt, it didn’t last long. We were tied 1–1 at halftime, but shortly after the second half began, Gérson sent me a long, high pass. I let it bounce off of my chest. Before it hit the ground—and before Viktor realized what was happening—I volleyed the ball into the net to put Brazil in front 2 to 1.
The Czechs were good sports once again that afternoon, but our team just had too much offensive firepower. Jairzinho, our star forward, added two more goals—beginning an unprecedented and remarkable streak of his own. The game’s final score was Brazil 4, Czechoslovakia 1. We showed our ability to play as a team, we refused to be intimidated by our past mistakes, and with a handful of circus moves like the shot from midfield, we served notice to our opponents that the old, flamboyant Brazilian style of play was alive and well.
So much for myopia!
15
Our next game was a battle royale between the two previous World Cup champions—us against England. It was a matchup that I had yearned for four years previously, and that I was desperate to play in. We knew it would be one of the toughest games of the entire 1970 Cup. However, we also knew we had a formidable secret weapon on our side—the Mexican crowd.
The English coach, Sir Alf Ramsey, was a good man and a fine tactician whose work I always admired. Unfortunately, he had angered some people back in 1966 when he described the Argentine team as “animals” after England beat them on their way to the World Cup championship. Many Latin Americans took the comment personally, and weren’t very shy about expressing their feelings. The night before our game, a crowd of around two hundred people gathered outside the England team hotel, most of them carrying drums, frying pans, horns and other noisemaking devices. They serenaded the English team until about three in the morning, when armed guards finally started firing into the air to drive them away.
Like I said, it was one crazy World Cup!
Meanwhile, Ramsey had also boldly predicted that England would not only win our group, but also go on to repeat its championship of 1966. Fair enough—he had a very good team, including Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton and many other top-notch players from four years previous. But, on the day of our game, the fans in the Guadalajara stadium seemed to be just continuing their long blowout party from the night before—I’d never heard such a raucous crowd. The stands were filled almost entirely with Mexicans—the contingent of Brazilian fans was estimated at only about two thousand people—but almost everyone was cheering for Brazil. It felt like we were playing before a home crowd. It was absolutely marvelous.
We also knew that the world would be watching as it never had before. Television had become much more widespread in the previous four years, and the 1970 Cup was the first to have broadcasts in color. The Brazil-England game was probably, at that point, the most-watched event in world history, journalists wrote. In England alone, some twenty-nine million people watched, nearly as many as saw the first moon landing the year before.
Coach Zagallo, calm as ever, told us before the game to ignore all the hype, and not to get carried away by the pro-Brazil crowd. “Don’t expect to just samba your way through this game,” he warned. “And don’t expect any quick goals either!”
Ten minutes in, I thought I might just prove him wrong. Jairzinho made a great move to get past his English defender and he made a perfect high cross into the penalty box. I leapt into the air and—keeping my eyes open, as always—headed the ball down just inside the post. The moment I hit it, I knew it was a goal. But the English goalkeeper, Gordon Banks, made an amazing leaping save all the way from the other post, and managed to just barely scoop the ball up and over the bar. It was one of the best saves ever in a World Cup, if not the best, and the game remained tied going into halftime.
In retrospect, I think the header might have been too individualistic a way for us to win the game. If our 1970 squad was all about teamwork, then we had to score on a true team goal—one that reflected the rapport we’d spent the past year developing.
And so, fourteen minutes into the second half, Tostão made a sublime no-look pass over to me. “I didn’t see Pelé while I was dribbling,” he later said, “but I knew where he would be because every time I go to my left he covers the center. I wasn’t wrong.” I got the ball right in front of the English goal. Instead of shooting, though, I sent a gentle pass wide to my right, evading the two defenders who were closing in on me. Jairzinho, wide-open with only the goalie to beat, took one step and slammed the ball toward the net.
Not even Banks could catch that one. The Mexican crowd went absolutely crazy. Brazil 1, England 0.
That would be the final score—a hard-fought, true team victory. Zagallo, decades later, would still call it “the best match I’ve ever watched.”
Afterward, the Mexicans came to our team hotel to celebrate the victory with us. People were everywhere, hundreds of them—laughing, clapping us on the back, drinking beer and tequila in the hallways and in our rooms. Even the security guard
I’d been assigned couldn’t keep an eye on everything—at one point, someone sneaked into my room and took all fourteen of my shirts as souvenirs. I didn’t really mind, but I was left without anything to wear for the next game! The team even considered asking Bobby Moore, the English player I’d given my shirt to at the end of the game, to give it back. Ultimately, a special airlift from Mexico City solved the problem—and we went back to celebrating.
Like I said—during that era, you just had to embrace the chaos.
16
Our next two games were both very challenging. We worked hard to beat Romania 3–2 in our final game of the group stage, and then we had to face a very spirited team from Peru in the quarterfinals. That game had special meaning for me—the coach for Peru was Didi, my good friend, the “Ethiopian Prince,” the elder statesman who had led Brazil to victory in Sweden in 1958. Befitting his own legacy as a player, Didi trained the Peruvian team to play well beyond its natural ability, with a relentless focus on offense. The game we played was free and open, full of attacks and counterattacks—aesthetically speaking, one of the favorite matches I ever played. Brazil won, 4–2.
After vanquishing Peru, all of us gathered in the locker room to listen to the radio. A tightly fought game was taking place in Mexico City to determine who would be facing us in the semifinals. Despite our euphoria at having just won, you could have heard a pin drop in that room. Nobody said a word—in fact, nobody even showered or changed. We were too glued to the action.
Regular time ended with the score tied at zero, so the game went to extra time. Finally, as the overtime drew to a close, one of the teams managed a single goal to win it.
We all looked at one another.
We smiled.