Why Soccer Matters

by Pelé

  There wasn’t a hotter ticket in New York that day. Every single seat in Giants stadium was full, and we had some eighty thousand people show up. More than six hundred fifty journalists from thirty-eight nations also attended. President Jimmy Carter gave a speech, and Muhammad Ali came and saw me in the locker room. In classic Ali style, he said of me: “I don’t know if he’s a good player, but I’m definitely prettier than him.”

  Before the game started, we made one last gesture toward the growing popularity of the game in the States. Nine youth teams formed a circle around the middle of the field—six of them boys’ teams, two of them girls’ teams, and one team made up of athletes from the Special Olympics. They dribbled some balls around to show off their considerable skills. Then the captains from the last several winning teams of the World Cup walked out on the field together: Hilderaldo Bellini, my captain when Brazil won in 1958; Bobby Moore, England’s captain in 1966; Carlos Alberto, our 1970 captain; and my New York Cosmos teammate Franz Beckenbauer, captain of West Germany’s winning side in 1974.

  I was honored that so many good friends made the trip. But there was an even bigger surprise visitor at that game: Dondinho, my dad. After so many years of soccer, he had come to only a precious few of my games. He always supported me, of course, but he didn’t like to travel and he preferred to keep his distance from the mad crowds at the stadiums. On this most special of days, the true and final farewell of my long career, Dondinho made the effort to come. The sight of the man who had taught me everything I knew about soccer, walking out there on the field of Giants Stadium that day, was one of the most profoundly emotional moments I ever had.

  As you might guess, I was crying before the game even started! I scored a goal in the first half, and then at halftime, I switched jerseys—and, in a gesture toward my past, I played the second half for Santos. Unfortunately I didn’t score any goals for Santos, but nobody really seemed to care. When it was over, they supplied me with a microphone and I gave a short speech to the crowd and all my teammates, which I ended by shouting: “Love! Love! Love!” It might not have been the most eloquent conclusion, but I was overwhelmed with emotion and it reflected what was in my heart. Then I grabbed both a Brazilian and a U.S. flag and paraded them around the field, riding on the shoulders of my teammates.

  It was three weeks before my thirty-seventh birthday. I was now financially secure, an icon in the United States, and truly happy with my life. I was now done playing for good, and what Waldemar de Brito had once predicted was true: I had my whole life in front of me.

  17

  For a fleeting moment, it looked like all that effort might have been for naught—suddenly and violently washed away, like budding leaves by a spring rainstorm.

  The Cosmos and the NASL, despite all their success, had made some grave mistakes. They had expanded far too fast, for one thing, with a league of twenty-four teams by 1980. Worse, the spending spree on international players, as every team in the league tried to sign their own version of Pelé, backfired in several different ways. Teams ended up signing a bunch of name-brand players who were washed up by the time they got to the NASL: The league began acquiring a reputation in Europe and elsewhere as an “elephants’ graveyard,” with poor quality of play. The emphasis on foreign talent also took roster spots away from American players who could have, in turn, better connected with local fans and—crucially—helped produce the next generation of soccer stars in the United States.

  Worst of all, all that spending on foreign stars proved to be awfully expensive. In 1977, my final year in the league, only two teams turned a profit: Minnesota and Seattle. That’s right: Even the Cosmos, the team with by far the league’s most robust attendance and international name recognition, was operating in the red.

  The league held on for a while, and thrived for a few years after I left. The Cosmos’ peak attendance for a single year was actually in 1979, when they drew an average of 46,700 fans a game to Giants Stadium. But the rest of the league was struggling as the hype slowly faded away. Before long, only half the league’s teams were averaging better than ten thousand fans a game. In 1985, the NASL collapsed—taking the Cosmos with them.

  All these developments left me heartbroken. I worried in the late 1980s that soccer in the United States was “dying,” as I told reporters at the time. But I should have had more faith in the game. After all, the financial failures of one group of businessmen couldn’t erase all the hard work we had done. They couldn’t erase the appeal of a beautiful game that had several years to take root in very fertile soil.

  As was highlighted in Once in a Lifetime, a fine documentary film released in 2007 about the Cosmos’ rise and fall, the popularity of our team endured. It echoed through time in unpredictable, but very fulfilling ways. For example: I’ve mentioned that, when the Cosmos signed Franz Beckenbauer, a group of children mobbed him at the airport upon his arrival in New York. One of the kids present at the airport that day was Mike Windischmann. Mike was a ball boy from the Cosmos starting in 1975, the year that I signed with the club. Well, when Mike grew up, he became an excellent player in his own right, and was named the captain of the United States national soccer team! He even led the U.S. team into the 1990 World Cup. This, of course, was the first time the Americans had qualified since 1950, when they famously upset the English team on Brazilian soil, as I’ve mentioned.

  Indeed, the generation that came of age during the 1970s—during the Cosmos years—changed everything. Even if the NASL disappeared, and American professional soccer went into a kind of hibernation in the 1980s, the love for soccer they had acquired did not.

  Even during the darkest moments, soccer was still being played on thousands of big, grassy fields throughout America. I’m flattered to say that some people even referred to the American kids who grew up playing soccer in the 1970s and 1980s as “the children of Pelé.” Mia Hamm, the greatest women’s soccer player ever in the United States, if not the world, spoke of how she used to attend our games religiously when the Cosmos played in Washington, D.C. Major League Soccer, the league that blossomed in the United States and thrived in ways the original NASL hadn’t, thanks in part to much more prudent financial management, remains full of players who were touched in some ways by what we did. Jay Heaps, a former star player and now the coach of the New England Revolution, was born the year after I arrived in New York. But he still said that he watched Pelé: The Master and His Method over and over again on his VCR as a kid. He said he even tied a soccer ball to a tree branch and bounced it on his head for hours on end to practice headers! It tickles me to no end that, even today, Dondinho’s techniques are still influencing soccer players, sixty years later and five thousand long miles away from Baurú.

  The real coup, the one that secured the future of soccer in the United States for good, came in 1988. Several countries were competing for the right to host the 1994 World Cup. One of the finalists was the United States. I had dreamed since the 1970s of getting a World Cup on American soil—I thought, once again, that the exposure to top-shelf talent was necessary to seduce the discriminating U.S. public and win them over to the game. If we could gather the world’s best players in their prime and have them play in stadiums all over the United States, it would be even more effective than the Cosmos had been in its heyday.

  My zeal for an American World Cup had a hitch—the other two finalists to host the 1994 Cup were Morocco and . . . Brazil. You can imagine the rage back home when I publicly supported the United States’ bid. Lots of sports columnists and others in Brazil accused me of being a stooge for corporate America, or just unpatriotic. I had my reasons, though.

  First, I believed that we had a limited window of time to ensure soccer’s future in the world’s richest country: We needed a “big bang” of quality soccer to get everybody’s attention, and hopefully lead to a revival of a professional American league. Second, I believed that the Brazil of that era was in no condition to
host a World Cup. I was relieved that democracy had returned in 1985, but unfortunately the transition out of the dictatorship had been chaotic in many ways. Brazil’s financial situation—always difficult—had never been worse. Poverty was soaring. So was inflation, as the newly elected government spent far more money than it took in. Remember how upset people were when, in the early 1960s, prices in Brazil were doubling every year? Now, in the late 1980s, they were doubling every month. Who in their right mind thought we could afford to build a bunch of new stadiums, or even renovate existing ones, in a situation such as that? As I said publicly at the time: “A country where millions of people are starving and which has the Third World’s largest foreign debt cannot consider the sponsorship of a World Cup with government money.” This was an extremely unpopular thing for me to say, but it was the truth.

  On July 4, 1988—Independence Day in the United States—FIFA announced that the United States had won the right to host the World Cup tournament in 1994. I was proud to have done my part, and gleefully told reporters that the decision was “a dream come true.” Alan Rothenberg, then the head of the U.S. Soccer Federation, thanked me for my help and later said: “Pelé was the single most important person in bringing the World Cup to the U.S.A.”

  18

  When the shining moment finally came, the American World Cup was a bigger success than even I had imagined. The average attendance of nearly sixty-nine thousand fans per game shattered the previous World Cup record of fifty-one thousand, which had been set in England in 1966. The U.S. team played well enough to make it out of group play to the elimination round, but they were unlucky enough to draw a very difficult opponent in the Round of Sixteen: Brazil.

  This matchup—which also occurred on the Fourth of July, oddly enough—sparked a huge media firestorm as pundits breathlessly asked: Which team will Pelé support? The tension was made worse by the very long title drought—twenty-four years—which, combined with all the problems Brazil was suffering in the mid-1990s, had the whole country on edge. “Anxiety has broken out like a national rash,” the New York Times wrote. “It’s not because the Brazilians are afraid of the Americans. It is just that, in Brazil, there are only two results: stylish victory and panic.”

  That still makes me laugh, mostly because it was—and is—so true! But in the end, there was no reason for nerves of any kind. Obviously, I supported my home country, while also hoping for a good performance from the country that had treated me with such marvelous generosity.

  The final result was perfect: a very closely fought 1–0 victory for Brazil, played before eighty-four thousand raucous, flag-waving fans at Stanford Stadium in northern California. The United States’ defense was incredible that day, allowing only a goal to Bebeto in the seventy-fourth minute. The result was in doubt until the final whistle blew. Even if the Americans didn’t win, they got to see international soccer at its absolute finest. The U.S. national team would build on that performance, and do even better in ensuing World Cups.

  As for Brazil, that 1994 team was a very, very good one. My old teammate and coach from 1970, Zagallo, was now back in the fold, serving as the top assistant for the team manager: Carlos Alberto Parreira. We had an amazing crop of players including Dunga, Bebeto, Romário, and a phenomenal young talent named Ronaldo—who was seventeen, the same age I had been in Sweden in 1958. Although Ronaldo didn’t play much in 1994, he would eventually go on to break not only my Brazilian mark for most career goals scored in World Cups, but the world record as well, with fifteen.

  Speaking of Sweden, they also had an outstanding team that year, and they were our opponents in the semifinals. That was a toughly fought game, and it almost seemed like the Swedes would get revenge for that day so long ago in Stockholm—until Brazil finally got a goal in the eightieth minute from Romário, and held on to win 1–0 to advance to the championship game.

  In the final, Italy played a very spirited match, just like they always did against us. Regular time ended in a scoreless draw—and so did overtime. That was the first World Cup final ever to be decided by penalties, which was a bit of a shame. But nobody seemed to mind—least of all the Brazilians, who ended up winning.

  The crowd erupted in cheers. The U.S. vice president, Al Gore, came down to the field to present the trophy to Dunga. I was there on the field, too, overcome with pride in my adopted country, and my favorite sport. Both of them, despite long odds, had conquered the hearts of everyone.

  BRAZIL, 2014

  1

  I’m often asked: “Was there ever a time in your career when you choked? When you buckled under pressure on the soccer field?”

  Oh yes, I say. Big-time. But it was also the moment that, in turn, opened up one of the most rewarding chapters of my life.

  In 1969, the year before the World Cup in Mexico, I began to approach an unprecedented milestone in soccer—one thousand career goals. This was considered a particularly difficult achievement, in part because of the sheer number of games I needed to play to get there. My career totals included my games with Santos, the Brazilian team, and even the year I played with the military upon my return from Sweden. After winning the World Cup, I, like all other Brazilian youths during the 1950s, had to perform a year of military service when I turned eighteen. I thought it was a great message, that everybody was treated equally—and the military got some benefits out of the arrangement too, including a pretty good forward for their in-house team!

  It was a lot of soccer, a lot of sweat and hard work. As I’ve already said, Santos scheduled an extraordinary amount of games, hoping to cash in as much as they could on our popularity. In 1969, for example, I played nine games in March, six in April and six in May. In June, Santos had games against Corinthians, São Paulo FC and Palmeiras—the three powerhouse teams of São Paulo. I also played for Brazil against England, the defending world champions, in a tough 1–0 victory. Finally, at the end of the month, I traveled with Santos to Milan, Italy, to play a powerful Inter team. And that was a relatively easy month, with only five games! Some people, then as now, tried to downplay the significance of the one-thousand-goal milestone, saying it was inflated by all those games. To which I respond: I certainly wasn’t in charge of our schedule. And I think I should get some credit for not simply collapsing in exhaustion on the field!

  In any case, most people thought it was a number worth celebrating. “One thousand goals in soccer is comparatively a greater feat than that of Babe Ruth’s 714 lifetime home runs in baseball,” the Associated Press wrote at the time. The Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade was particularly kind, declaring: “The difficulty, the extraordinary thing, is not to score one thousand goals, like Pelé. It is to score one goal like Pelé.”

  The only problem with having people say such nice things is that, afterward, you have to live up to what they say. And by October 1969, as I cleared the nine-hundred-ninety-goal threshold, I was feeling physically tired, and more than a bit rattled emotionally as well. I didn’t like all the pressure being focused solely on me—it was the same kind of uncharacteristically nervous reaction I’d experience during my “farewell” games some years later. Nobody really cared about my nerves, though, nor should they have. I was a professional, doing what I loved. The contingent of fans and reporters from all over the world grew and grew with each passing day. Before our road games, teams would stage parades, hang flags and even invite marching bands to honor me—even though I was playing for the opposing team!

  Under the weight of all these expectations, I hit a wall. I couldn’t score a goal to save my life. One of our games during that stretch ended in a 0–0 tie. During a match in Salvador, against Bahia, I had one shot bounce off the goalpost, and in a separate but equally agonizing near miss, I had the ball stolen from me at the goal line by a defender. Things got so bad that Santos even decided to make me the goalie during a game against a small team in João Pessoa, in Brazil’s northeast. This in itself wasn’t a huge stre
tch for me: I had been the reserve goalie for Santos for many years, thanks to all that time practicing the position when I was a kid back in Baurú. But in this particular case, I think the club’s leadership was probably just showing mercy on me.

  With me seemingly stuck on 999 goals for eternity, Santos was due to play Vasco at the Maracanã, of all places. I played some big games in that stadium in my life, but I can’t remember one quite as intense as that match. The date was the nineteenth of November, which is Brazil’s Flag Day. The stadium was packed to capacity. There was a military marching band on the field, and a release of balloons into the sky. I felt like I was going to throw up.

  Finally, a crossing pass came toward me, nice and high, just as I liked it. I was in perfect position to head the ball into the goal. I jumped as high as I could, kept my eyes open just like Dondinho had taught me, and . . .

  Gooooalllllllllllllll!

  But wait—I hadn’t touched the ball. Rene, a defender for Vasco, had jumped into the air to block me and ended up knocking it in himself—an own goal! I couldn’t believe it! My God, I thought I’d never score again!

  A few minutes later, though, as I was running into the penalty box with the ball, I was tripped up. The referee blew his whistle. A penalty kick! I couldn’t believe it. This was how the one thousandth goal would happen?

  Yes. I took a good long time to line up the shot, and even realized that I was trembling a bit. But when the moment came, I ran up to the ball, made a little pause to fool the goalkeeper, and then knocked it in.

  This time, for real:

  Goaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  The crowd roared. I ran into the back of the net, picked up the ball, and kissed it. The stadium erupted with firecrackers and cheers. A phalanx of reporters ran over to me with microphones and TV cameras and asked me how I felt. I hadn’t really thought about what to say beforehand, so in the heat of the moment, I spoke my mind—and I dedicated the goal to the children of Brazil. “We need to look after the little kids,” I said. “That’s what we need to be worrying about.”