Goodbye to Pelé: it was football

Today dies Soccer, the most romantic idea we have of it. The game dies, understood as beauty, youth, happiness. He passes away at 82 years old Edson Arantes do Nascimento, said Pele – nickname with mysterious origins given to him by a playmate – born poor in Tres Coracoes, in the deepest part of Brazil, who has become not only the strongest footballer of all time – he plays with Diego Armando Maradona: the debate is open – but the elegy of football itself, a man kissed by the gods and born to play football.

Who and what was Pele who crossed football from the late 50s to the mid 70s Today the videos on Youtube, the documentary films and the many books that have been written about him tell us about it; but it is really difficult, in these hurried years of ours, to restore in its entirety the figure of a champion who, like no one else, has been able to mark his era. Pele was football. Nothing more, nothing less. Hyperbole was wasted for him, the dictionary was plundered, in search of the adjective that would best define him.

He was certainly the most famous athlete of the twentieth century, known everywhere, even in the most remote village on the planet. “I’m more famous than Jesus Christ”he said years ago, with an almost superb affirmation which in fact does not belong to the nature of this champion who madehumility its pedestal. He played, as well as with that of Selectwith only two club shirts, that of Santosmediocre team that he took to the top of the world, and that of the Cosmos of New York, in that adventure that saw him king and pioneer at the same time, preacher of football in the very gifted lands of the States with a team that looked like a Dream Team.

He won three World Cups, no one like him. The first, the one in Sweden of 1958, not yet of age, a beardless candid and naive child but endowed with the rare magic of the predestined. He was the Brazil of Pelé-Didì and Vavà, the grainy images of that triumph see him crying non-stop, at the final whistle, on the shoulder of another legend, the goalkeeper Gilmar. The second in 1962in Chilewhen his fame was already planetary and the third in Mexicoin the 1970in the famous final against Italy by Mazzola and Rivera: that day Pelé scored the opening goal by flying very high into the sky and remaining there, suspended in the clouds, before hitting the ball with his head.

Throughout his remarkable career he scored 1279 official goals, but for the Brazilians there are many, many more. In every gesture of his there was the most intimate harmony that this game preserves, in his every dribbling, in his every shot; the spark of genius shone. He was a pure diamond, Pelé; who contributed, yes, for real, to making football the most loved game on the entire planet. Some time ago he said: «I hope that when I go to heaven, God will receive me as they do here on Earth, thanks to football».

In the last period the weight of the years began to be felt. He was in and out of hospitals with a frequency that was beginning to worry everyone who loved him. He had been operated on in September 2021, then an ordeal. Pelé was also much loved and not only for what he had done on the pitch, when he played; but above all for the serenity that he emanated, that open smile and that natural disposition to shoulder the dreams of the many who admired him, without feeling responsibility as a burden but living it with the lightness of someone who knows life and knows how to make good use of it.

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