Raphael Stevens

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    My Uncle Taught Pelé Guitar: The Mourning Is Deeper in One City

    All around the world, fans have mourned the loss of Pelé, whose unrivaled mastery of the beautiful game catapulted him to a level of celebrity attained by few athletes.Yet in Santos, Brazil, where Pelé shot to stardom and spent much of his career, his death hit like nowhere else, the loss more personal and intimate.He arrived in the port city south of São Paulo as a scrawny teenager in the 1950s, and in some ways, he never left. For some, he was a neighbor or a friend who, even after rising to global celebrity, always stopped to chat near on the corner of Vila Belmiro, as the stadium for the Santos F.C. soccer team, where Pelé began his rise, is popularly known. For those who never met him, his soul seems to permeate the place, representing a unifying spirit in Brazil despite, or maybe because of, inequity.With his funeral set for Monday in Santos, fans flocked to sites around the city to remember Pelé’s legacy, on and off the field, and to bid farewell.Marcos MartinsAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesMarcos Martins, 48, civil engineerI was born here — I’ve always been from Santos. My uncle was also a football player for Santos. He was Santos’s 10th top scorer, so he was on the team with Pelé, he played ball with Pelé.My uncle always told many stories about him. When Pelé arrived in Vila Belmiro, he was already 28 years old; Pelé was just 17.It practically raised the bar for football in Brazil. With the arrival of Pelé, everything changed.He turned Brazil, and also Santos, into a global football reference. Santos is a small city, but it had a football team that was equivalent to, if not better than, some European teams.And Pelé learned to play the guitar with my uncle. My uncle taught him. My uncle liked to play the guitar. And Pelé liked music, too.Fernando Perez Jr.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesFernando Perez Jr., 65, lawyerHold on, I need a minute. It’s really emotional. It’s really hard.I’ve seen him play here. I saw his farewell game in 1974. But I also saw him play in 1968, in 1970. I was about 13 or 14 years old when I used to watch him play.All my brothers were Corinthians (a rival team). I was born here, but they came from São Paulo. So my brothers and my father hated Pelé because he would always destroy their team. He would wipe them out. And I had to run away from home to listen to the games, to listen to Pelé play.Pelé raised the self-esteem of the Brazilian people. Brazil is a country that suffers a lot. And Pelé gave us that dignity. He made us feel like we can be big, too. And it went beyond football. It’s this sense of “I am, and I can be.”Manuel Messias dos SantosAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesManuel Messias dos Santos, 83, retired dock workerI met Pelé when I was in the military, at the time when he was serving as a soldier. His team in the barracks used to win a lot.Then when I worked as a warehouse clerk in the Gonzaga neighborhood, where he hung out a lot, he was always on the sidewalk, talking to someone, talking to someone else. He was very much like us, he was a man of the people. He spoke to everyone. Everyone. With children, with old people, with whoever. He talked to everybody — he was a popular man.Teófilo de FreitasAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesTeófilo de Freitas, 68, retired city hall workerHere at Santos, I’ve been a member since 1975. I’ve been rooting for the team since I was a kid. Inside the stadium, I even played ball with Pelé. It was during a Santos training session in 1972.All Brazilians like football, so Pelé is an idol for us. He is the idol of football. So for us, it’s heartbreaking — it’s very sad to see him go. Of course, we are all going to die one day. But this is a loss that brings deep sadness to Brazil.He was a one-of-a-kind person, he was an extraordinary player. Pelé made so many people happy. He was a football genius.Onofra Alves Costa RovaiAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesOnofra Alves Costa Rovai, 91, retired seamstressI’ve been here since 1949. I came here from the countryside. I came to Santos. And right away, I came to live in front of the stadium. I’m a die-hard Santos fan!From my house, I could see the field. So we used to watch the games from my living room. When he played, the stadium was always packed. Everyone wanted to see him play.He had something different about him. When he got the ball, he ran and ran. He played football with his heart.I already met him. He used to stop by here all the time, to say hello. My mother adored him — he always talked to my mother here at the front door.Mario MazieriAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesMario Mazieri, 66, retired bankerI came from the countryside. I moved here when I was 14 because of Santos.In the 1960s, when I still lived on the farm, my brothers and I would listen to the Santos game on the radio. There wasn’t any television then, just the radio. So we listened to the games, to the plays that Pelé made, to his goals.And I decided that I needed to see this with my own eyes. When I arrived in Vila Belmiro for the first time, I was shaking head to toe.I’m always in this bar here, it’s all “Santista” here. We used to see Pelé around here, too. One day, right over there, I got to shake his hand. It was 2012.Luiz Fernando Tomasinho, with children Luiz Gustavo and Valentina.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesLuiz Fernando Tomasinho, 31, air-conditioner mechanicSantos was always my team, and it was my dad’s team. I moved here two years ago because of Santos.Life was hard for many people when I was growing up. And watching Santos brought so much pleasure to the community.My first football shirt was Pelé, No. 10. I was 7 years old. And with my kids, it’s the same thing. They’re both 7. And I already got them their shirts.I took them to the stadium today, so they could pay their respects. It’s really sad — it’s heartbreaking.I never got to see Pelé play. I only saw the photos and the videos. He had this magic, he was different from everyone else.The kids these days, they do the same thing; they watch his plays on YouTube, and they fall in love with the sport. His legacy is huge.Lúcia BuenoAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesLúcia Bueno, 25, project managerI’m from Vila Belmiro. Many of my memories of the neighborhood have to do with listening to the game and hearing the goal, before it appeared on TV. And it was always a time of getting the family together, to watch the games.I think he left a mark on many people because of his excellence as an athlete, but there is also the story of him coming from a very poor family.I’ve always been really involved in Black social movements. And I have come to understand what Pelé meant to people, as this really strong role model.He played this role in the lives of so many people, by setting an example. He was an extraordinary athlete, but he was also a Black person who was the best in the world.Gabriel Silva Paulino dos SantosAnita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesGabriel Silva Paulino dos Santos, 20, app developerI personally have never seen him play. But my father used to watch his games and he would see Pelé walking down the street. As if he were just a normal person.Today it is already very difficult for poor people to turn into successful players. And in his time, I think it was even more difficult because there were more barriers and it was harder to play. Players fouled hard and didn’t get called for it. Those things were harder back then.So he dedicated himself a lot, he trained a lot. There’s the story that he trained here on the beach. He trained at the club and trained on the beach here afterward. He was very dedicated.Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times More

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    Pele’s Breakthrough Gave Soccer a Black Star

    Pelé’s reign atop the most popular sport on earth began in an era defined by political struggles against colonialism and racial inequity around the world.Pelé’s graceful genius was just one part of what made him unforgettable.He was a dervish, a magician, an artist whose speedy precision, bullet drives and twirling bicycle kicks were brush strokes offering a challenge to the staid, stationary, and traditional standards of the game he came to dominate.The soccer field was his canvas, where he created masterpiece after masterpiece, starting at the very beginning of his career. In 1958, he was only 17 and just a few short years removed from learning soccer on the streets of an impoverished Brazilian favela that was his home. But at that year’s World Cup, he scored six goals, including three in the semifinals against France and two in a 5-2 win over Sweden, the home team, to clinch the championship.That’s the genius, precocious and pure.But the other part, what made Pelé the indelible gold standard of the global game, was timing. I do not mean the timing on the field that Pelé possessed — and did he ever. I mean how his rise lined up just right with changes in the world.After winning that 1958 World Cup, Pelé would quickly stride to the top of the most popular sport on earth and remain there for nearly 20 years, in an era defined by political struggles against colonialism and racial inequity around the world.The world changed in ways that lined up perfectly for Pelé, gilding his mystique, and TV was a prime mover.Think about when he emerged. He would solidify his status as the game’s greatest star, the first from the African diaspora to achieve such acclaim, in the 1960s, before topping off his career in the ’70s by pushing Brazil to a third World Cup title. He then attempted to capture the hearts of soccer-skeptical America by playing for the New York Cosmos. Television became ubiquitous, and so too did Pelé.Pelé drives past Antonio Girardo (6) of Napoli to score one of his two goals for Santos in an exhibition match on Randall’s Island in 1968.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesGrace and genius and the luck of perfect timing. That’s Pelé.It was just a few short weeks ago, on Dec. 18, when we once again saw Pelé-style brilliance displayed at the World Cup. Argentina defeated the reigning champion, France, on the wind of penalty kicks. Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé conjured a final of such tension and quality that many called it the greatest World Cup game.It shredded nerves, brought tears of joy and pain in equal measure, and spawned a new round of arguments. Who is better — Messi or Mbappé? And more than that, with Messi finally fulfilling his World Cup dream, did he have a case as greatest soccer player of all time?Could the whirling Argentine be better than Pelé? Or had he not yet topped his countryman, Diego Maradona?That argument will not be solved here. It could go on until the end of time. But notice the throughline: Pelé is the ultimate measure.Only one player is held in such high regard that he is seen as the prime example of greatness by which all others should be compared. Sports evolve constantly, but evolution must begin somewhere.Pelé was soccer’s Big Bang. The great players of the present day, and of the future, will follow his lead.There is another, less talked about way that Pelé was unique. He was Black and he burst forward into the global consciousness when people of color around the world were clamoring anew against entrenched power. This cannot be overlooked.Nuance is needed here, for Pelé was famously — some would say infamously — agnostic regarding the great struggles of the day. He shared the same élan and mastery as another champion of the era, Muhammad Ali, yet he lacked Ali’s outspoken conviction.“Ultimately I don’t understand anything about politics,” he said in a 2021 documentary.Pelé shared the same élan and mastery as another champion of the era, Muhammad Ali, yet he lacked Ali’s outspoken conviction away from competition.Richard Drew/Associated PressOf course, he endured plenty of criticism for not standing up to the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for roughly two decades, beginning in 1964 and lasting through Brazil’s victory in 1970.“A lot of people look less at what he did on the pitch, and more at what he did off of it,” said Paulo César Vasconcellos, a Brazilian journalist, in the documentary. “Off the pitch, he’s characterized by his political neutrality. At that moment in history, that worked against him.”But not every prominent athlete needs to be a firebrand. And it would be a mistake to cast judgment on Pelé while failing to recognize the deep history of Brazil and how its particular culture shaped and muted Black citizens for centuries.He was not Ali. Being Pelé was feat enough to push the world forward. A Black athlete who stirred a soul-deep passion in virtually every corner of the world. A Black athlete not just dominating, not just bringing a breathtaking aesthetic to the pitch, but becoming the mold by which all others are compared.Now we are on to the next.As fate would have it, in this year’s World Cup championship match defeat, France’s Mbappé netted a hat trick and won the Golden Boot award, recognizing him as the tournament’s top scorer. Black, lithe like Pelé, speedy like Pelé, possessing touch and alacrity and daring that feels oh-so-very-much like Pelé, Mbappé continues the evolution.In sports, greatness is transposed, and sometimes polished, player to player, era to era. And in soccer, each generational great, each Mbappé or Messi, each Marta or Abby Wambach, each Maradona or Cristiano Ronaldo, each graceful genius who will play the beautiful game of the future, comes created in the mold of Pelé, the one and only. More

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    Afghan Goalkeeper’s Escape From Kabul Was Supposed to Be the Hardest Part

    About 16 months into her new life in Australia, Fati, who was the Afghanistan women’s soccer team’s goalkeeper, can still be overwhelmed by “all the things I’ve lost.” It’s time to jump-start life, she said.The New York Times Sports department is revisiting the subjects of some compelling articles from the last year or so. In August, we reported on a soccer player who fled her home in Afghanistan to begin a new life. Here is an update.When her new life in Australia becomes too overwhelming, Fati, the goalkeeper for the Afghanistan national women’s soccer team, heads to the beach in the nighttime.She walks along the shoreline of Port Phillip Bay, where the skyline of Melbourne glows in the distance. She shines a flashlight on the colorful fish darting around the shallow water. And listening to the gentle lapping waves, she takes a deep breath and exhales.There in the darkness and solitude, it’s Fati’s time to reflect. And to mourn.“I try hard to relax and be calm, but I always end up thinking about all the things that have happened to me and all the things I’ve lost,” she said. “I see that the water is endless, like my problems are endless.”Fati waiting for a car ride. Two jobs and a brutal daily schedule gave her despair. Some speaking offers and the chance her story would be turned into a dramatic film gave her hope.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times(The New York Times is not using the last names of Fati and her teammates at their request because they fear retribution from the Taliban.)About 16 months have gone by since Fati and her teammates on the national team risked their lives to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country. After The New York Times featured Fati in an article in late summer, she was offered paid speaking engagements, including one opportunity to speak at a law school graduation in California in 2023.There is also a chance that her story will be turned into a dramatic film after more than a half-dozen people showed interest in buying the TV and film rights.“Sometimes I feel like so strong and I want to keep sharing my story and motivating other people,” she said. “I’m making a difference, I hope.”But none of that can magically heal her body and mind after running for her life from the Taliban, and then having no choice but to leave her parents and youngest sister behind.The Taliban Takeover in AfghanistanA Year Under the Taliban: ​A single year of extremist rule has turned life upside down for Afghans, especially women. A photographer captured the jarring changes.Reversal of Women’s Rights: ​In a return to its hard-line stances from the 1990s, the Taliban have barred women from attending college, ending the final hopes for girls’ education in Afghanistan.A Team in Exile: ​The Taliban have barred girls and women from playing sports. The Afghan women’s national soccer team is still feeling the effect of the ban, even from the safety of Australia.Inside the Fall of Kabul: ​In the summer of 2021, the Taliban took the Afghan capital with a speed that shocked the world. Our reporter and photographer witnessed it.Fati and most of her teammates on the national soccer squad were forced to leave Afghanistan without both parents because large groups often couldn’t make it past the Taliban checkpoints and chaotic crowds on the way to the Kabul airport, and to freedom.Fati, 19, now lives in a suburb of Melbourne with her older brother, a younger brother and a younger sister, and she has become their stand-in parents. Their parents and 5-year-old sister, Kawsar, are back in Kabul, barely making ends meet amid the country’s economic collapse.From left, Fati’s brothers, Khaliqyar and Ali Reza, and her sister Zahra ate a meal with Fati the way they did in Kabul.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesSome of Fati’s teammates’ families have left Afghanistan for relative safety in neighboring countries like Iran or Pakistan while they await Australian visas. But Fati’s family has not had such luck. Her parents and Kawsar do not have passports, complicating a difficult situation.Their immigration case has stalled in the system, and the potential cost for Fati to secure their exit from Afghanistan through backdoor channels is too much for her to pay. She and her family are Hazara, an ethnic group that is often discriminated against and targeted by the Taliban, and the price for those families to leave the country is in the thousands and can be more than twice the cost for non-Hazara families, she said.“I try not to be negative, but if you want me to tell the truth, I am losing my hope that my family will get a visa,” she said.The thought of never seeing her family again, or waiting many years to see them, is unbearable, she said, because time already is going by so quickly. She is crushed that Kawsar is growing up without her.Through daily video calls, Fati has noticed that her little sister has changed so much since they last saw each other in the melee outside the Kabul airport. Kawsar’s hair is long now, and the English that Fati taught her is slipping away. No longer does Kawsar watch Disney animated films to learn English and improve her own prospects in life, the way Fati did. Kawsar also has stopped going to school because it is just too dangerous. The Taliban have barred girls and women from playing sports and also have barred girls from going to school past the sixth grade.“She’s not the same Kawsar as I knew,” Fati said, choking up.Fati does her best to help her family in Kabul by sending them money. And while once she was supporting just her parents and Kawsar there, now she is supporting nine people who live in her family’s house. In recent months, her aunt moved in with her five children.Already, there is not that much money to go around. Fati must pay the bills for her house in a suburb of Melbourne where she lives with her siblings, two teammates and one teammate’s father.Fati photographed the lights of Melbourne, Australia, after eating dinner.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesFati also wants to relocate into the city to save herself the hourlong commute to work and soccer training, but the housing in Melbourne is too expensive.Her bank account balance bottomed out, once again, several months ago after her older brother, Khaliqyar, bought a car. She began working two jobs to help pay that bill.Her first job was in the IT department at a financial services company that is a sponsor for the Afghan national team, now that the team plays for the Melbourne Victory professional soccer club in a state league in Australia. From that IT job, Fati would go straight to her second job, an overnight shift at a pizza restaurant, preparing food and washing dishes until 4 a.m.The schedule was so grueling that Fati often had headaches and could hardly keep her eyes open, and began to oversleep and miss days at her office job. So when Khaliqyar landed a steady job at a painting company, she quit the pizza place.Now, Fati is able to focus on her soccer training and leadership activities, which include being a spokeswoman for her national team, a squad that is frustrated because it hasn’t been able to play any international matches.The Afghanistan Football Federation deactivated the women’s national team program when the players left the country, a spokesman there said, and FIFA, the global governing body of the sport, has ignored the team’s request to be reinstated.“I’m trying not to cry about the team anymore, but it’s hard,” she said. “I just want to turn on my Afghani mode and work hard to be a good goalkeeper and keep dreaming about playing in the World Cup someday.”Fati says she wants to play soccer for her country again someday.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesIn August, the anniversaries of Fati leaving Kabul and arriving in Australia were among her toughest days in recent years.During that time, she found it too hard to focus on her English class and dropped out of the course, which she said made her even more distraught and depressed. Several weeks later, there was an attack on an education center in Kabul that killed many Hazara students, including one of her teammate Bahara’s relatives.Fati, Bahara and some of the other players went to the beach that night to find solace, and the women spent the night wiping their tears.“I look at the water and I know the water is so cold, and I’m afraid that my heart is also getting cold,” Fati said that night.These days, she is applying for scholarships to a local university so she and her sister Zahra can start classes next semester. It’s time to jump-start life, Fati said. When she was a teenager, she wanted to be an archaeologist, and Fati still wants to see the pyramids in Egypt and visit China’s Great Wall. She also wants to play soccer for her country again.“I’m so much afraid of time and I think about dying, so I know I have to use every opportunity,” she said. “What if all of my time goes by and I never see my family? What if I die without reaching my dreams?” More

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    Cristiano Ronaldo Signs With Al-Nassr, a Saudi Team

    The soccer superstar will be paid handsomely to play in the Middle East in the twilight of his career.When Pelé came to join the New York Cosmos in the 1970s at the end of his career, he became by an order of magnitude the biggest star ever to play in North America. Now, Cristiano Ronaldo could be filling the same role in the Middle East.Ronaldo, 37, one of the world’s best players for almost 20 years, has agreed to a two-year contract to play for al-Nassr, a team in Saudi Arabia, the club announced on Saturday just after midnight local time. It posted photos of Ronaldo holding a blue-and-yellow jersey and standing with the team president.History in the making. This is a signing that will not only inspire our club to achieve even greater success but inspire our league, our nation and future generations, boys and girls to be the best version of themselves. Welcome @Cristiano to your new home @AlNassrFC pic.twitter.com/oan7nu8NWC— AlNassr FC (@AlNassrFC_EN) December 30, 2022
    Although Ronaldo is in the twilight of his career, the deal was variously reported as being between 150 million and 200 million euros ($214 million), meaning he will enjoy a huge contract even as he leaves the more competitive world of European soccer behind.“I’m excited to try a new soccer league in a different country,” Ronaldo said in a statement provided by the team in Arabic. “Al-Nassr has a very inspiring vision, and I’m thrilled to join my teammates in the club so we can help the team achieve more success together.”Ronaldo is generally considered to be, along with Lionel Messi, the greatest player of his generation. He has won the Ballon d’Or, the trophy for the world’s best player, five times, most recently in 2017. Only Messi, with seven, has more. Messi’s victory with Argentina this month in the World Cup in Qatar seemed to cement in many fans’ minds his spot at No. 1, with Ronaldo at No. 2.Ronaldo has excelled at scoring goals for top European teams, including Sporting Lisbon, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus. But he wore out his welcome in his latest spell at Manchester United, leaving by mutual consent in November after a little more than a season. He had clashed with his manager, fumed over a lack of starts and showed reluctance to play pressing defense.Such was his fame that even when he was on the bench he tended to capture the headlines rather than the United players who were making the passes and scoring the goals.Ronaldo has also been the star of the Portuguese national team for years, leading it to a European championship in 2016. Earlier this month, the team lost to Morocco in a World Cup quarterfinal, and Ronaldo left the field in tears after what was almost certainly his last World Cup match. He was benched at that tournament, too, after appearing to pout about being substituted in a previous game.His fame has transcended the game: He has more than 500 million Instagram followers, second only to Instagram’s own account.Al-Nassr, based in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, is one of Saudi Arabia’s top teams, winning the league title as recently as 2019 and sitting second in the table this season. But like just about every team in the world, it stands several steps behind the giant European teams, like the ones Ronaldo has played for earlier in his career.The team is sponsored by Qiddiya, a sports and entertainment company launched by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund in 2018 with a plan to build a huge complex outside Riyadh that would include a theme park, a Formula 1 track and a soccer stadium.Major Saudi soccer clubs are ultimately owned by the state through the Ministry of Sports. Boards of the clubs and their finances must be approved by the ministry. The government has in the past said that it planned to privatize the clubs, but those plans have stalled.Messi earlier this year signed a deal with the Saudi government to become a tourism ambassador for the kingdom. With Saudi Arabia keen on bidding for the 2030 World Cup, an event its neighbor and sometime rival Qatar just hosted, having both Ronaldo and Messi associated with its project would be seen as a major coup for its sports ambitions, already exhibited through the new LIV Golf tour.Ahmed Al Omran contributed reporting from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. More

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    Tributes Pour In as Brazil Prepares to Bid Pelé Farewell

    Pelé’s body will lie at midfield at the Estádio Urbano Caldeira, his former club’s stadium, for 24 hours.SANTOS, Brazil — A day after Pelé’s death, fans of Brazil’s greatest soccer star took to the streets to mourn their hero and celebrate the man they called “The King of Football.”On Monday, a wake will be held at the Estádio Urbano Caldeira, known popularly as Vila Belmiro, in Santos, where Pelé shot to stardom and spent almost his entire career. His body will remain at midfield for 24 hours, until Tuesday morning, to allow what is expected to be a throng of mourners to pass by.The coffin will then be taken through the streets of Santos to the Ecumenical Necropolis Memorial for a private interment.Before the official farewell, grief-stricken fans were quick to gather at soccer’s major landmarks in Santos, a Brazilian port city of 430,000, to pay homage to Pelé, who was declared a national treasure and rose to a level of global stardom that few athletes have known.Across the street from the stadium, Eva de Souza Nunes, an 84-year-old retired nurse, hung two oversize flags bearing the Santos F.C.’s crest from her balcony. “I’m in mourning today,” she said. “And it’s not just me — Brazil is in mourning, the whole world is in mourning.”Eva de Souza Nunes hung flags on her balcony in honor of Pelé and his Santos club.Lalo de Almeida for The New York TimesFondly, she remembered Pelé visiting her home; her husband, José, used to fix the soccer legend’s television, she said. “He wasn’t my family, but at the same time, it felt like he was.”Across town, fans flocked to a bronze statue depicting Pelé’s famous “air punch” goal celebration, laying flowers and snapping selfies. Rafael Barbosa, a 32-year-old bar owner, and his daughter Livia, 10, drew close to the statue for a picture, lifting their fists and striking the iconic pose.“Pelé is our king,” said Barbosa, who had traveled more than 300 miles from the city of Paraguaçu Paulista to pay his respects. “He’s history. He lives on in our memories, in the memories of our grandparents.”“Before Pelé, football was just football,” his cousin André Barbosa, a 23-year-old agricultural engineer, chimed in. “After ‘The King,’ football became this incredible spectacle.”Pelé’s impressive athleticism and unrivaled creativity on the field have become the stuff of legend, leaving a lasting mark even on those who never witnessed his mastery of the sport.“I never saw him play,” said Thiago do Santos, a 37-year-old real estate agent, as he took a selfie with his two dogs in front of the statue. “But I was in the crowd outside the stadium when he came out after a ceremony one time. And he hugged me. The King hugged me! I’ll never forget it.”Vilma Mattos de Lima, a 69-year-old special-education teacher, donned a white Santos F.C. jersey signed by Pelé and laid a hand on the statue with reverence. She had never missed a game, she said as she clutched a pair of old photos of herself next to her idol.“I was 10 years old when I saw him play for the first time. And I was enchanted from that moment,” she said. “Losing him is heartbreaking.”Vilma Mattos de Lima showed a photograph of her meeting Pelé.Lalo de Almeida for The New York TimesAt a Santos-themed bar, lifelong fans reminisced about Pelé’s masterly passes and dazzling goals, which popularized Brazilian soccer around the world and ushered in a new form of the sport that he called “the beautiful game.”“What I liked was that, every game, he did something new,” said Carlos Eduardo Fernandes, 69, the owner of the bar, which is adorned with faded images of Pelé. “We were dying to see what wild play he had come up with.”But Pelé’s reach went far beyond the field. In a deeply unequal Brazil, his meteoric rise from poverty to global stardom made him a national symbol, beloved by the country’s poor and marginalized.“What made Pelé so popular was his simplicity,” said Sérgio Luiz Alonso, 61, a retired oil rig worker. “He came from humble beginnings. He was just like us, like the people.”As a child, Alonso waited outside the Santos training center for Pelé to come out after practice. “He would sign autographs for us; he never turned us away,” he remembered.Condolences and reminiscences for the most famous soccer player in history also poured in from politicians, athletes and artists at home and abroad.“I had the privilege that the younger Brazilians did not have: I saw Pelé play live at Pacaembu and Morumbi,” said Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s incoming president, referring to two stadiums in São Paulo. “Not merely play. I saw Pelé presenting a master class. When he got the ball, he always did something special, often ending in a goal.”“Pelé changed everything,” said Neymar, the Brazilian superstar. “He turned football into art, into entertainment. He gave a voice to the poor, to Black people and, above all, he gave visibility to Brazil. Football and Brazil raised their status, thanks to the king. He is gone, but his magic will remain. Pelé is eternal.”“He will be immortalized in every magnificent goal, in every moment of genius, but mainly in each one of us who were inspired by him and his generation,” said Cafu, the former Brazilian great.A fan outside the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in São Paulo with a banner honoring Pelé as the eternal king.Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times“By your feet we were and will continue to be blessed by your art,” said Marta, one of the best women’s players ever. “I love you, king.”“Michael Jordan was the Pelé of basketball,” said Antonio Tabet, a Brazilian comedian. “Muhammad Ali was the Pelé of boxing. Michael Phelps was the Pelé of swimming. Roger Federer was the Pelé of tennis. Pelé was Pelé. Eternal, unrestricted and an adjective.”Leonardo Coelho More

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    Days of Wins and Roses: Covering Pelé’s Cosmos

    While the public saw one version of the Brazilian soccer legend in his three years in New York, covering the team offered an up-close look at the man.The private Pelé, the one even his most devoted fans never got to see, liked to sit in the back of the bus.When the New York Cosmos moved into the magnificent new Giants Stadium in New Jersey in 1977, it looked as though they, and soccer, had finally arrived. Before then, the Cosmos rarely attracted crowds larger than 15,000; in the 1977 season, they averaged more than twice that figure and three times surpassed 60,000.The sudden change could be credited to one man: the incomparable Pelé, who had come out of retirement three years earlier, at age 34, to join the Cosmos and try to turbocharge soccer’s popularity in the United States. Pelé’s personal charisma was amplified by the masterful publicity machinery of Warner Communications, the team’s owner. Supplementing its A-list soccer team with stars from its music and film labels, Warner made Cosmos games a hot ticket, feted Cosmos players at Studio 54 and — by footing the bill for a polyglot media horde — generated a whirl of publicity in every league city the team visited.On road trips in those days, the team bus shuttled players, coaches, trainers and reporters from the airport to the hotel to the stadium and back again. The Cosmos had a handful of other Brazilians, including Carlos Alberto, the captain of the 1970 World Cup winners, and on every trip they would sit together at the back of the bus, drumming and singing. Brazilians can create a samba beat anywhere, and the tray tables and armrests of the innumerable rented buses made fine tapping territory. And every time the music started, a quick glance over the shoulder would find Pelé sitting among his countrymen, smiling that broad, relaxed smile, drumming away.When he stepped off the bus, Pelé entered another world, one that required special handling. His teammate Franz Beckenbauer, the World Cup-winning German star, once said that he loved playing and living in New York because he could walk down Fifth Avenue and nobody recognized him. Pelé’s celebrity meant he enjoyed no such freedom.Pelé with fans in Washington in 1975. He and the Cosmos became a touring attraction.Associated PressHe had a bodyguard, Pedro Garay, virtually everywhere he went, as well as an entourage of personal assistants, marketing executives and friends. During practice sessions, this group would stand at the ready, prepared to fulfill any need, from booking a restaurant table to arranging a gift to delivering a message to his wife, Rosemeri, and their children.In rare moments of one-on-one conversation, Pelé seemed to prefer asking questions of his interviewer rather than talking about himself. In the chaos of the post-match locker room, where on any given day celebrity guests like Mick Jagger or Henry Kissinger might be circulating among the players, coaches and journalists, he would patiently answer a stream of questions until every reporter, every angle, was sated.In that pre-internet age, dozens of newspapers, TV and radio stations, magazines, and news agencies sent reporters to see Pelé, and the Cosmos, filling press boxes and changing rooms with a vibrant mix of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish, French and assorted varieties of English.The locker room scene was new for Pelé. Before joining the Cosmos, he had answered reporters’ questions either in postgame news conferences or scheduled interviews. The rest of the soccer world did not — and still does not — follow the American custom of admitting reporters into the locker room immediately after games to get players’ reactions.But selling soccer in America required accommodations, and Pelé — the sport’s champion — took it all in stride. Serene as ever, he would sit in his locker stall, a hefty white towel around his waist, his gnarled and battered-looking feet wedged into shower shoes, answering in genial but broken English.Pelé always struggled with English. He tried, but it didn’t come easily. Quickly he learned to greet people he recognized as “my friend,” sometimes because he had forgotten the name, sometimes just to express kindness.When he had harsher feelings to express, his limited English often helped. To criticize the team’s tactics, lineup or other coaching decisions, he could vent to his longtime friend and interpreter Julio Mazzei, known as Professor Mazzei, who spoke fluent English and would relay the complaint. (The Cosmos eventually made Mazzei the team’s head coach.) And on the practice field, Pelé would yell, “Look! Look!” to point out a poorly placed pass, or, “Work! Work!” when he felt teammates weren’t giving enough effort.Pelé and his teammates with the 1977 North American Soccer League championship trophy, his only title with the team.Associated PressBy 1977, when other international stars had joined the team, a few jealousies flared, making for good gossip. But almost all of Pelé’s teammates, and especially his younger ones, loved him. Steve Hunt, a promising English wing, had just turned 21 when the Cosmos won the 1977 N.A.S.L. championship in Pelé’s final competitive game. Hunt scored the first goal and assisted on the winner in the Cosmos’ 2-1 victory. Afterward, in the giddy, champagne-drenched locker room, the young Hunt sobbed as he took the measure of his contribution, blurting, “I helped Pelé win his last championship.”Yet Pelé never exuded the celebrity self-involvement so typical of superstars. He would talk to children or ordinary people endlessly, often until his handlers had to physically pull him away. He exuded warmth and delighted in the kindness of small gestures.Not long after the Cosmos moved to Giants Stadium, in June 1977, I was at a weekday practice, working as a sportswriter for the New York Daily News. Several journalists and I were talking casually with Pelé, Mazzei and others when someone mentioned that it was my birthday. “Happy birthday, my friend,” Pelé said, smiling that famous smile.That evening, the doorbell rang at my Manhattan apartment. Outside was a delivery man with a huge bouquet of red roses. Tucked inside the bouquet was a small card. “Happy Birthday,” it read, “from Pelé.” More

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    When Pelé Took New York by Storm

    In August 1967, it was hard to imagine that Americans might get interested in soccer. Then Pelé played at Yankee Stadium.It was August 1967. The Yankees were languishing near the bottom of the standings, their great years behind them. The Mets had not yet become the Miracle Mets. Still, it was hard to imagine then that a soccer player would capture a large measure of New York sports fans — if not the entire United States.But there he was, all of 5 feet 8 inches and 145 pounds. Pelé. We in the sportswriting business had heard of him, of course. He had led Brazil to two World Cup titles. We had even seen him play in New York the year before.But this was soccer. Although played in some neighborhoods of the Bronx, Queens or Brooklyn where immigrants brought it from home, it had not yet widely taken hold across the land.In the Sheraton-Atlantic Hotel, on Broadway and 34th Street, Pelé was holding a news conference. A day later, his team from Brazil, Santos, was to meet Inter of Milan at Yankee Stadium. A year earlier, Pelé had played in a boisterous match at Randalls Island, where fans ran from the stands onto the field to protest a referee’s call.Now, there were rumors that promoters were thinking of expanding soccer in the States by starting a league, and what better place to start, what better athlete to help jump-start it, than Pelé, known as the “Black Pearl”?A South American newspaper reporter asked the first question.“Honorable Sir,” he began.And I realized something different was happening here.“Honorable Sir”? I don’t think anyone addressed even Willie Mays as “Honorable Sir.” Obviously, this was not your typical American athlete. (Mays, by the way, was the highest paid baseball player at the time at $125,000 a year. Pelé was earning $200,000 for Santos).The foreign reporters continued to ask their questions, a beatific expression over their faces as they looked at this graciously smiling fellow who was deemed a national treasure by Brazil.That’s right, a national treasure, making him officially something like the Statue of Liberty. By Brazilian law, he could not be traded to another team out of the country.Everything about him was fascinating, starting with his name. A Brazilian reporter told me that in São Paulo they call street soccer “pelada”; he was such a symbol of the game that he got the nickname Pelé. (Pelé himself, though, offered several possible explanations for the nickname in his autobiography, but most probably it was a derivation of a player named Bilé whom he had admired as a boy.)Pelé, 26 at the time, seemed quite comfortable talking with the international press before appearing at America’s most famous stadium. He spoke about his far-flung business interests, his 7-month-old daughter.More than 15,000 tickets were sold in advance of the game. What would people see? What did this unassuming man do that would make Americans interested in soccer? There were clues. In his game the year before, when the second half began, fans ran onto the field. A woman kissed Pelé. Other fans fought with some of the players. It was a chaotic scene.Yet, as I watched, I understood how it came to be known as the beautiful game. And I recalled my first time with a soccer ball, at City College of New York. Like most New York kids, I had played baseball, stickball in the streets, basketball in the gyms and outside courts of the local schools.But when I started to kick the soccer ball, there was a freedom I felt that I hadn’t gotten even from baseball. And in soccer, you are always in the game. You are always moving. You never stop — well, almost never. The game goes on and on and you’re always in it.And now, all these years after college, as I watched Pelé at Yankee Stadium and listened to the full-throated fans hollering in Portuguese — there was a sizable Brazilian population in New York — I understood why Pelé had become a national treasure.He was injured near halftime when three Inter players surrounded him and one tripped him. Pelé sat out the second half.No matter. There were 37,063 fans at the game, then the third highest for a soccer match in the United States.Within a few years, big-league soccer came to America, and not just as a fad. And, of course, Pelé came with it, bringing his big smile, his incredible upside-down and backward kicks and his boyish enthusiasm for the sport.He showed Americans why soccer was the beautiful game. More

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    Pelé Was Brazil’s Ambassador to the World

    In leading his national team to success on the field, a soccer star helped his country find itself.The young soccer players who were gathered on the lush green grass of the Rose Garden were buzzing even before the president of the United States took hold of the microphone. Even the president knew they had not come to see him.“Oh, by the way,” the president began, almost as an aside, “my name’s Ronald Reagan.” The Brazilian soccer star next to him needed no introduction.Everyone knew Pelé.He had met, by then, three American presidents, starting with Richard Nixon a decade earlier, and he would go on to meet several more. Each visit cemented the role of Pelé, who died on Thursday, as not just the world’s best soccer player, but as a living embodiment of his country. He was, for most of his 82 years, Brazil’s representative to the world and a source of pride to a nation that found itself, thanks in part to the magic in the feet of the 17-year-old wunderkind who fired it to its first World Cup championship in 1958.Brazil has identified with — and been identified with — Pelé ever since. It is hard to overstate the meaning of the connection between the individual and the country, a link that endured at his death almost as strongly as it did in Pelé’s heyday, when he was among the most famous people in the world. For a country still looking to make its mark in the postwar years, Pelé’s arrival signaled Brazil’s coming-of-age.When he arrived in Sweden for the 1958 World Cup, Pelé frequently recalled, he was surprised at how little people knew about the place that had produced him, a country he had believed to be the best in the world.That view was not widely shared in Brazil. The nation was burdened in those days with the so-called complexo de vira-lata, a term coined by the writer Nelson Rodrigues after Brazil’s humiliation on home soil in the final game of the 1950 World Cup. That defeat, Rodrigues wrote, exemplified a collective inferiority complex Brazil saw in itself, not just in soccer but in its relationship with the rest of the world.“Here is the truth,” Rodrigues wrote. “We can’t find personal or historical pretexts for self-esteem.”The same writer, however, said just before the team headed to Sweden eight years later that it had finally found in its young star a figure to lift spirits and to turn Brazil into a nation of which its citizens could finally be proud.“With Pelé on the team, and others like him, no one will go to Sweden with the souls of stray dogs,” Rodrigues wrote. “The others will tremble before us.” They did just that.That first world championship delivered to Brazil the type of recognition it craved, and in Pelé it found a talent whose brilliance set him, and the Brazilian people, apart. Brazil’s canary yellow shirts and Pelé’s dazzling play became synonymous with the country itself, its calling cards to the world.As Brazil won a second title in 1962, and a third in 1970, Pelé came to personify a period of sustained success on the soccer fields that was matched by an economic boom at home and the rise of bossa nova, a style of samba music from Rio de Janeiro that swept through the world like a current of electricity. Brazil’s confidence was sky high then, and in Pelé the nation had found “O Rei,” its king, a nickname that would be attached to Pelé until his last breath.In Brazil, Pelé’s feats, successes and celebrity meant so much more given where he had come from and — whether he embraced it or not — whom he represented.Brazil, in 1888, was the last Western country to abolish slavery, and Pelé was born just 52 years later, a poor Black child who started out life shining shoes.Pelé was the subject of a 2021 Netflix documentary.NetflixHis journey to national hero, after his explosion onto the global consciousness as a teenager, was particularly meaningful for Brazil’s Black population, and for its poor. His popularity also lifted him above the fray of domestic issues, soccer royalty in a nation still finding its way.Pelé, sometimes to the frustration of activists, rarely spoke out about racism during his playing career or afterward. He would often repeat the consensus view that Brazil was in fact a “racial democracy,” a position that has been challenged with the growth of the Black consciousness movement. His refusal to take political stands also stood out in a period when Brazil was ruled by a series of dictatorships, during which Brazil’s military sought to take advantage of soccer’s popularity to sustain its hold over the country.“I thought his behavior was that of a Black person who only said, ‘Yes sir,’ a Black person who is submissive, accepts everything,” Paulo Cézar Lima, a former teammate on the Brazilian national team, said in a 2021 Netflix documentary made with Pelé. “A single word would have meant so much in Brazil.”Yet to some of his other compatriots, Pelé’s very presence as a globally recognized Black Brazilian was enough. Taking on a dictatorship, after all, carried risks.Pelé’s legacy was sealed at the 1970 World Cup, a tournament in which he initially did not want to play. Brazil’s team, a double defending champion, had been eliminated in the group stage in the 1966 championship in England, with Pelé literally kicked out of the tournament by the roughhouse play of Brazil’s opponents. He was nearing 30 as the 1970 tournament neared, and he had said he had enough. Yet his country, and its military leaders, wanted him to go, and he finally buckled to the pressure and traveled to Mexico with a team few at home believed could win the title.That it did so, in stunning style and with Pelé at its heart, brought joy to a country then living through some of the darkest years of its modern history, a time when the government of Emílio Garrastazu Médici killed and disappeared scores of its opponents and tortured thousands more.“I am convinced that I helped Brazil a lot more with my football, with my way of being, than the politicians whose job it was to do this very thing,” a frail-looking Pelé told the Netflix filmmakers for the documentary released last year.As Pelé’s star rose, so did that of Brazilian soccer. His team, Santos, which had given Pelé his debut at 15, became a global force. With Pelé in its ranks, it was lured to Europe for monthslong tours, where it took on — and took apart — some of Europe’s biggest clubs. Those European teams quickly came to realize what Brazil was, Pelé would say. But he always came home.Pelé playing for his Brazilian club team, Santos, in 1968.Associated PressIn many ways, he didn’t have a choice. Such was Pelé’s importance to the state that in 1961 a declaration in Brazil proclaimed him a “national treasure,” a designation that meant he could not be transferred to any club outside Brazil. For more than a decade after that, the declaration kept him out of the clutches of rich foreign suitors.Even as he remained tied to Santos, though, Pelé’s fame was dovetailing with the start of modern sports sponsorship. His face adorned billboards throughout the country and beyond. His former teammates would remark that Pelé was almost as good at selling products as he was at playing soccer. He was finally able to capitalize on that fame when he moved to the United States in 1975: His three-year contract with New York Cosmos was worth $6 million, the equivalent of more than $34 million today.Pelé was 34 by the time he started playing in the United States, and by then he represented far more than what he had to offer on the soccer field. He was effectively Brazil’s ambassador to the entire world, a man who moved in the company of celebrities and presidents, a player who could pause a civil war and then shake hands with a queen.For Brazilians, those moments were a source of pride, each one a reminder of how a country in search of itself had finally found it through the medium of soccer, and through the brilliance of Pelé. More