The king is dead!
Football is not dead, it lives on, but it has grown old. Just a decade ago it was still a young sport. And how is football’s popularity measured? When the gods and kings of this species are alive and watching the newly born stars, we are still dealing with youth.
World football has lost another and who knows the greatest legend.
Football Gods
Just a few years ago, Johan Cruyff, Maradona, Di Stefano and Pele were making predictions ahead of the World Cup. They attended various matches. Even in the last days of his life, Pele responded to football events. He was a big fan of Mbappe, who probably reminding of himself.
Now they are no more.
The gods died.
Football has grown old.
“I hope one day we will play football together in heaven” ?️
Chasing Pele
17-year-old Pele became the main symbol of the Brazilian renaissance. Pele is the Zeus of the football world. Soon after his appearance, he stood on the highest step, and after that we only follow the chase. Everyone is trying to outdo, everyone is trying to be better than him.
Well, not long ago, Cristiano Ronaldo surpassed the number of officially scored goals. Pele would not admit it, but still. It was considered so.
The fact is that Pele became a benchmark for 50 years, during which time they tried to reach his mark, and as it turned out, this record was broken. Pele actually had no limits, if Pele only competed with himself, he had left everyone else behind at the age of 27.
3 World Cup Wins
Three World Cups are also a strong point. After this point, as a rule, they do not write anything more. For so many years, more than a thousand authors have tried to write something, with different styles, different nationalities, but no one succeeds, and no one knows if someone will succeed or not. Well, who will reach three World Cups?!
“World football says goodbye to Pele” ?
It so happened that he played only two World Cups perfectly, the debut and the last. between the ages of 17 and 29. When he should have peaked, injuries took him away.
1962
In 1962, he started with a goal, got injured in the next match and missed the entire tournament. Every time I looked at this goal, I thought that he scored in the Brazilian championship, he was so superior to all players, he played at such a different pace that I couldn’t even imagine another situation. I found out later that he scored against Mexico at the World Cup. We have seen more beautiful dribbles, but I have never seen such power before, Pele is running and not only is he being chased, but they can’t understand in which direction he is running, as if he knows that at some point the defender will be there, he also knows that he will oppress the defender and still score a goal.
It’s a pity that he could not play.
Brazil won without him.
1966
The same thing happened again in 1966. Pele started with a goal again and got injured again. However, he went out to play against Portugal and was even more seriously injured. Doctors enter the field and pour cold water on his leg. It was a painkiller at that time.
1970
In 1970, he overcame this misfortune and brought the matter to the end. Stayed healthy and stayed victorious. If it weren’t for the injuries, I personally have no doubts that he would have won all the championships, and nobody knows where he would stand with his goals.
This was the championship where those pictures are remembered as goals, which could not become goals. It seems that only the goal preserves this beauty, without which, it is sometimes lost, but still, everyone remembers it to this day.
Pele deceives the goalkeeper so much that he does not touch the ball.
Pele tries to score from his own half and half the stadium thinks it’s a goal.
Pele hits with his head in a high jump and.. Banks!
Pele and Maradona have never won the Copa America. Well, Messi won, but he won at the sixth attempt. And Pele had one attempt, that was at the age of 18, scoring eight goals in six matches. Brazil did not lose the match, but still did not become the champion. Back then, the fate of the champion was decided by points. That was it. No more attempts were made.
Pele didn’t play for European club
It is considered a disadvantage for the king that he has never played in Europe. Why should he play? The Brazilian championship was one of the best in the world, if not the best. Despite the greatest football dynasty, Brazil has never had the generation it had between 1958 and 1970.
We can only compare it with the 90s in terms of the number of stars. Well, now imagine, from 1994 to 2006, if any Brazilian you can think of, starting with Romario, continuing with Ronaldo and ending with Ronaldinho, with their entire constellation, if they all played in Brazil, what level of championship would it be?
It was like that then… it was like that during Pele’s time. Every team had a star. And yet Santos was on top because Santos had Pele.
Santos against the Europeans
Therefore, it is like the words of a man who does not know the case well, when saying: he has never played in Europe and what kind of king he is!
remind you that intercontinental matches were also held. Pele played against the Champions Cup winners. In 1962 it was Eusebio’s Benfica. In 1963, the Milan of Altafini, Rivera and Cesare Maldini.
Has anything changed? No, Pele was still king. Both with Milan and Benfica. Here it appeared that the level of Santos was not inferior to that of Europeans, on the contrary, it was superior. He won both of them. Benfica’s leader Eusebio was Pele’s biggest fan, despite the fact that the age difference between them was only two years.
Why he became a fan is not hard to understand, Santos beat European Cup winners Benfica 5-2 in Portugal. It’s not just that Pele scored a hat-trick and made two assists. It’s about the football he was playing then. In bad quality, however, it still survives in the FIFA archive and there you can see what the king is up to.
A year later, Santos did the same to Milan. Milan won the first match 4:2, Pele scored a brace, during the first goal one still has the impression that the athlete of the 21st century is playing in the 20th century. Always one step ahead, one head above all. Cesare Maldini is a mere bystander.
Santos won the second match 4:2. Without Pele!
In the decisive match, the so-called decider, Santos won again, 1:0, again without Pele.
This is for those who think Pele spent his career in the weak league. The South American teams at that time were not inferior to the European ones and Santos was superior.
Therefore, the questions asked about Pele in this context remind me of the story of Andy Gray, when he talks about Messi and the rainy weather in Stoke.
However, it must be said that the pace was really low in the Brazilian championship. Pele played fast, otherwise the championship was slow-paced. Technical, powerful and slow at the same time. Didi wrote about it in his notes. When he moved to Real Madrid, the first thing he mentioned was that they play at a much higher pace in Spain.
We can’t really see all of Pele’s goals, the best goal that he scored remained only in people’s memories. There was no camera in the stadium. Then, they animated this goal graphically. Many people do not even believe that it was really scored.
Well, let’s pretend for a second that we don’t have the tape of the 1958 final, that no one has seen it and then someone tells that 17-year-old Pele took the ball on his chest, put it over the defender’s head, though he was very close, he still put it cleanly without touching him at all and scored it in a far corner without letting the ball touch the grass, would you believe it? I don’t know.
Pele – Athlete
And yet what do we see in these records? First of all, we see the perfect athlete. Pele is very fast, amazingly coordinated and technical. He makes decisions very quickly, he likes to change the direction of the attack, he is always one step ahead, he plays flawlessly with both feet, he also likes to play with his head and he seems to be perfect.
That’s why the representatives of his generation have such standards – does he use his right foot? Is he playing with head? It’s finished.
Where did these criteria come from? from Pele. Pele is their benchmark. Of course, this cannot be considered as the main criterion in football, the God and Messiah of football brought a completely different world, but there was something ancient about Pele, the gods were sculpted like this by the Romans, with a perfect body. They could not imagine that the divine soul could be in an overweight man.
Therefore, Pele is mostly part of the ancient cult.
Would Pele play today on the same level?
He wouldn’t be able to play today, I heard that too. What do you say, not only he would be able to play, he would also fly!
A man of this ability, with this talent and natural capabilities would become a football monster in today’s environment. We are talking about an era where medicine has developed so much that a boy who could not grow taller grew into the biggest man in the world with the biggest shadow!
Sometimes they were belittling this old man, you are making up everything, you have scored those goals in the army.
I wonder what he thought about it.
Probably nothing.
It’s not even worth thinking about.
The king died.
Football has grown old.
Long live the king!
