Many learned of Pele's story through word of mouth or grainy photos, but he began Brazil's legend
In a jersey the colour of the sun Pele radiated an exotic glow. We knew so much about him without any real experience of him. There were no live streams of his club side Santos, none of the Saturday/Wednesday inputs that have documented every kick and spit of the careers of Messi and Ronaldo, no packaged highlights on social media intensifying our appreciation.
Were you so inclined you could visit YouTube and pick your way through his top 20 recorded goals and still only glimpse his majesty. Most of his Oscar winners were never captured on celluloid. The ones that were, or at least at the start of his career, revealed balls laced up the middle, boots that coal miners might wear, sparse, grassless pitches that were either baked like concrete or swamps.
It was his gift to the world for in 1970 Mexico beamed colour pictures into homes across the world, allowing Pele to reveal his virtuosity to a mass audience for the first time. It was like watching the petals of a flower open in front of our eyes. The ball was a constituent part of him such was his command of it. There was a stealth about his movements, a ghost-like quality. He would be there then not there, a gossamer presence floating about the pitch.
The event was littered by iconic moments, not least an attempted lob from the halfway line against Czechoslovakia and the audacious dummy he threw the Uruguay goalie in the semi-final, Pele going one way and the ball the other to leave the defenceless Ladislao Mazurkiewicz clutching at the weather. As a mercy, on collecting the ball, Pele pulled his shot wide. Brazil’s emphatic display in final against Italy remains the gold standard.
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