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    Mário Zagallo, Longtime Fixture of Brazilian Soccer, Dies at 92

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    The first person to win the World Cup as a player and a coach, he was a link to decades of Brazil’s success and failure on the sport’s biggest stage. Mário Zagallo, who as both a player and coach helped lead Brazil to four World Cup soccer championships, becoming a national hero and one of only three people to lift the tournament’s trophy in both roles, died on Friday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 92.His death was confirmed by his family on his social media channels. Barra D’Or Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, where he had been a patient several times in recent months, said the cause was multiple organ failure.An attack-minded wing as a player and a tactically minded coach known as “the Professor,” Zagallo was part of the Brazil teams that won consecutive World Cup championships in 1958 and 1962 and the head coach of Brazil’s 1970 champions.His 1970 triumph made Zagallo the first person to win the World Cup as both a player and a coach, a feat that has since been matched only by Franz Beckenbauer of Germany and Didier Deschamps of France. But it may have been that team’s style of play as much as its success that cemented a recurring role for Zagallo in Brazilian soccer history.Led by stars like his former teammate Pelé, Jairzinho and Carlos Alberto, Brazil’s 1970 squad is widely considered one of the best soccer teams ever assembled. It was forged in crisis after his popular predecessor fell out with the country’s military government: Zagallo was appointed as head coach less than two months before the tournament’s opening game. Zagallo found himself having to act as the coach of many players who had only recently been his teammates.“It was easy to command, because the players saw and felt that I had the strength of personality to make the changes that I thought were necessary,” Zagallo recalled in a 2011 interview with The Blizzard, a quarterly soccer magazine. “I imposed myself — and this kind of leadership in front of the group is fundamental, even if you’ve participated in this group before as a player.”The team adjusted to Zagallo’s tactical alterations and then danced and shimmied its way into the hearts and minds of fans not only in Brazil but around the globe.Zagallo, second from left, shooting at England’s goal during a World Cup quarterfinals match in Chile in 1962. Brazil won the championship that year.Associated PressUnder Zagallo’s direction, in the first World Cup telecast around the world in color, Brazil’s team, clad in its famed canary-yellow jerseys, refined soccer to high art in its six straight victories in Mexico. Sweeping through the tournament with a highlight reel of memorable goals, the team showcased the fluid, elegant attacking style known as “o jogo bonito” (“the beautiful game”), which became Brazil’s calling card around the world.Returning as head coach, Zagallo led Brazil to a fourth-place finish in 1974. Two decades later, back on the national team’s bench as an assistant to Carlos Alberto Parreira, he helped Brazil collect its fourth championship with a victory over Italy in the 1994 final in Pasadena, Calif.Parreira’s team, a grinding and more results-oriented squad, was less beloved than previous editions of the Seleção, as Brazil’s national team is known. But it was celebrated for delivering the prize the country covets above all others.Four years after that, with Zagallo back in the top job and stars like Ronaldo leading yet another potent attack, Brazil returned to the World Cup final. But its run had come amid criticism from a nation of amateur coaches, who feared that, despite his ties to Brazil’s most mythical teams, Zagallo had surrendered to his pragmatic side.He did little to calm purists when he declared that a victorious end justified any means. “I would rather win playing ugly football than lose playing attractive football,” he said. Brazil, alas, did not: A heavy favorite, it was stunned by host France in the final.In 2002, when the team traveled to South Korea and Japan to pick up the record fifth title that had eluded it in France, Zagallo was serving as a special adviser to the coaching staff of Luiz Felipe Scolari.Zagallo, right, with his former teammate Pelé after his appointment as Brazil’s coach in 1970. They were on Brazil’s World Cup championship teams in 1958 and 1962.Associated PressThat was his last personal connection with a tournament, and a title, that by that point had defined his life for more than a half century.A pivotal moment of his life occurred in 1950, when, as a teenage soldier providing security, Zagallo had watched as Brazil was stunned by Uruguay in the final before a crowd of about 200,000 at the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro. That defeat, in Brazil’s first trip to the final, was a bitter blow to the nation, and he was among the tens of millions of Brazilians who shed tears of disappointment. “That day has never left my mind,” Zagallo told the BBC in 2013. He went even further speaking to the journalist Andrés Cantor for the book “Goooal: A Celebration Of Soccer” (1996). “From that moment on,” Zagallo recalled about the 1950 World Cup, “I have only soccer memories.”Eight years later, as a player on the national team, he helped rewrite the ending. In the final in Sweden alongside a teenage Pelé, Zagallo scored a goal in a 5-2 victory that delivered Brazil’s first world title. Four years later, he was on the team again when Brazil repeated the feat in Chile.Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo was born on Aug. 9, 1931, in Atalaia, a city in the eastern Brazilian state of Alagoas. His father, Haroldo Cardoso Zagallo, was a textile executive. His mother, Maria Antonieta Lobo Zagallo, was part of a family that owned a fabric factory. Mário Zagallo said his father had hoped he would become an accountant and work in the family business. Instead, he devoted his life to soccer, spending his professional playing career with two Rio clubs, making his debut with Flamengo in 1951 and retiring from Botafogo in 1965.He married Alcina de Castro, a teacher, in 1955. They had four children: Maria Emilia, Paulo Jorge, Maria Cristina and Mario Cesar. Zagallo’s wife died in 2012. His survivors include his children and several grandchildren.Since the death of Pelé in 2022, Zagallo had been the last surviving member of the first Brazil squad to win the World Cup. He would go on to burnish his legacy in five decades as a coach, assistant and adviser to generations of Brazilian teams.He would eventually lead more than a half-dozen clubs in his native Brazil, as well as the national teams of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But he was never far from his country, serving four distinct tenures as Brazil’s head coach. And even when he did not hold the post, he remained a fixture, called upon regularly — in success and failure and particularly in times of trouble — as a sage and distinguished link to its greatest teams, and its greatest triumphs.Fans pay tribute to Zagallo in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.Lucas Figueiredo/Getty ImagesAlex Traub and Tariq Panja contributed reporting. More

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

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      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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      Tributes Pour In as Brazil Prepares to Bid Pelé Farewell

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      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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      Pelé Was Brazil’s Ambassador to the World

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      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

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      Pelé, the Story in Pictures

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      He was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in the tiny Brazilian village of Três Corações, where he played soccer barefoot, using rolled-up rags for a ball. How a young man from such humble beginnings became Pelé, widely considered the greatest soccer player ever, is a story written on the hearts of generations of his compatriots and fans around the world.It is a story told, too, in photographs that spanned decades — and that grew in luster and clarity as his legend did.Pelé, who died Thursday at 82, burst onto the world soccer scene as a skinny 17-year-old, scoring two goals in the 1958 World Cup final to lead Brazil to victory over Sweden. He would go on to score 1,283 goals in his 21-year career, leading Brazil to three World Cup championships and becoming recognizable worldwide for his unmatched skill and captivating smile.Pelé, second from left, scored Brazil’s third goal in its 5-2 victory over Sweden in the 1958 World Cup final in Stockholm. He was 17.Associated PressNear the end of his playing career, he helped popularize soccer in the United States as a member of the New York Cosmos, leading the team to a North American Soccer League championship when he was a wily 36-year-old. His style of play was so inventive that his passes often seemed to surprise his teammates.The origins and even the meaning of the name Pelé are lost to history. But in these images, his genius as a player and his indescribable appeal are frozen forever in time.— Mike WilsonFans of Santos, Pelé’s club team, mobbed him when Santos won the São Paulo championship in 1961.Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesPelé also played on military teams as a part of his mandatory military service.Pele10/Sport 10 IP Limited, via Getty ImagesPele10/Sport 10 IP Limited, via Getty ImagesPelé on the ball against Czechoslovakia during the 1962 World Cup. He got hurt and could not play in the final, but Brazil won anyway.Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesWhen Pelé, pictured in an undated photo, was injured in the group stage of the 1966 World Cup, Brazil failed to advance to the quarterfinals.Central Press/Getty ImagesPelé reveling after he scored his 1,000th goal in 1969.Associated PressHitting a bicycle kick in 1968.Associated PressPelé scored the first goal of Brazil’s four goals in the 1970 World Cup final against Italy in Mexico City.Rolls Press/Popperfot, via Getty ImagesPelé played at Randalls Island in New York as part of an exhibition between Santos and West Ham in September 1970.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesDuring the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, Pelé, who famously loved music, relaxed with his guitar.Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesPelé with the World Cup trophy at a parade in Paris in 1971. Brazil’s victory in 1970 gave it permanent possession of the Jules Rimet Trophy.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPelé spent the last years of his career promoting soccer in the United States. In 1973, he visited students at a community college in St. Louis.Associated PressWith young fans in 1975.Associated PressPelé came out of retirement to play for the New York Cosmos. Associated PressPelé celebrated a goal for the Cosmos in 1975. Paul Hosefros/The New York TimesAt the White House with President Jimmy Carter in 1977.Associated PressPelé and Muhammad Ali, perhaps the two most famous sports stars of their time, embraced during a ceremony honoring Pelé at Giants Stadium.Associated PressPelé, carrying the flags of the United States and Brazil, was carried off the field after his final game in 1977. The Cosmos won 2-1 over Santos, with Pelé playing a half for each side.George Tiedemann/Sports Illustrated, via Getty Images More

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      Pelé, the Global Face of Soccer, Dies at 82

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      Pelé, who was declared a national treasure in his native Brazil, achieved worldwide celebrity and helped popularize the sport in the United States.Pelé, one of soccer’s greatest players and a transformative figure in 20th-century sports who achieved a level of global celebrity few athletes have known, died on Thursday in São Paulo. He was 82.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his manager, Joe Fraga.A national hero in his native Brazil, Pelé was beloved around the world — by the very poor, among whom he was raised; the very rich, in whose circles he traveled; and just about everyone who ever saw him play.“Pelé is one of the few who contradicted my theory,” Andy Warhol once said. “Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries.”Celebrated for his peerless talent and originality on the field, Pelé (pronounced peh-LAY) also endeared himself to fans with his sunny personality and his belief in the power of soccer — football to most of the world — to connect people across dividing lines of race, class and nationality.He won three World Cup tournaments with Brazil and 10 league titles with Santos, his club team, as well as the 1977 North American Soccer League championship with the New York Cosmos. Having come out of retirement at 34, he spent three seasons with the Cosmos on a crusade to popularize soccer in the United States.Before his final game, in October 1977 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Pelé took the microphone on a podium at the center of the field, his father and Muhammad Ali beside him, and exhorted a crowd of more than 75,000.“Say with me three times now,” he declared, “for the kids: Love! Love! Love!”Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pelé was a formative 20th-century sports figure who was revered as a national treasure in his native Brazil. He was known for popularizing soccer in the United States, and citing it as a tool for connecting people worldwide.Associated PressIn his 21-year career, Pelé — born Edson Arantes do Nascimento — scored 1,283 goals in 1,367 professional matches, including 77 goals for the Brazilian national team.Many of those goals became legendary, but Pelé’s influence on the sport went well beyond scoring. He helped create and promote what he later called “o jogo bonito” — the beautiful game — a style that valued clever ball control, inventive pinpoint passing and a voracious appetite for attacking. Pelé not only played it better than anyone; he also championed it around the world.Among his athletic assets was a remarkable center of gravity; as he ran, swerved, sprinted or backpedaled, his midriff seemed never to move, while his hips and his upper body swiveled around it.He could accelerate, decelerate or pivot in a flash. Off-balance or not, he could lash the ball accurately with either foot. Relatively small, at 5 feet 8 inches, he could nevertheless leap exceptionally high, often seeming to hang in the air to put power behind a header.Like other sports, soccer has evolved. Today, many of its stars can execute acrobatic shots or rapid-fire passing sequences. But in his day, Pelé’s playmaking and scoring skills were stunning.Early SuccessPelé sprang into the international limelight at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, a slight 17-year-old who as a boy had played soccer barefoot on the streets of his impoverished village using rolled-up rags for a ball. A star for Brazil, he scored six goals in the tournament, including three in a semifinal against France and two in the final, a 5-2 victory over Sweden. It was Brazil’s first of a record five World Cup trophies. Pelé also played on the Brazilian teams that won in 1962 and 1970. In the 1966 tournament, in England, he was brutally kicked in the early games and was finally sidelined by a Portuguese player’s tackle that would have earned an expulsion nowadays but drew nothing then.With Pelé essentially absent, Brazil was eliminated in the opening round. He was so disheartened that he announced he would retire from national team play.But he reconsidered and played on Brazil’s World Cup team in Mexico in 1970. That team is widely hailed as the best ever; its captain, Carlos Alberto, later joined Pelé on the Cosmos.“I wish he had gone on playing forever,” Clive Toye, a former president and general manager of the Cosmos, wrote in a 2006 memoir. “But then, so does everyone else who saw him play, and those football people who never saw him play are the unluckiest people in the world.”Pelé, right, hugging a teammate in 1958 after Brazil defeated Sweden 5-2 to win the World Cup.Associated Press/ReportagebildEdson Arantes do Nascimento was born on Oct. 23, 1940, in Três Corações, a tiny rural town in the state of Minas Gerais. His parents named him Edson in tribute to Thomas Edison. (Electricity had come to the town shortly before Pelé was born.) When he was about 7, he began shining shoes at the local railway station to supplement the family’s income.His father, a professional player whose career was cut short by injury, was nicknamed Dondinho.Brazilian soccer players often use a single name professionally, but even Pelé himself was unsure how he got his. He offered several possible derivations in “Pelé: The Autobiography” (2006, with Orlando Duarte and Alex Bellos).Most probably, he wrote, the nickname was a reference to a player on his father’s team whom he had admired and wanted to emulate as a boy. The player was known as Bilé (bee-LAY). Other boys teased Edson, calling him Bilé until it stuck.One of Pelé’s earliest memories was of seeing his father, while listening to the radio, cry when Brazil lost to Uruguay, 2-1, in the deciding match of the 1950 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. The game is still remembered as a national calamity. Pelé recalled telling his father that he would one day grow up to win the World Cup for Brazil.He signed his first contract, with a junior team, when he was 14 and transferred to Santos at 15. He scored four goals in his first professional game, which Santos won, 7-1. He was only 16 when he made his debut for the national team in July 1957.A New Way to PlayWhen Brazil’s team went to the World Cup in Sweden the next summer, Pelé later said, he was so skinny that “quite a few people thought I was the mascot.”Once they saw him play, it was a different story. Reports of this precocious Brazilian teenager’s prowess raced around the world. One account told of how, against Wales in the quarterfinals, with his back to the goal, he received the ball on his chest, let it drop to an ankle and instantly scooped it around behind him. As it bounced, he turned — so quickly that the ball was barely a foot off the ground — and struck it into the net. It was his first World Cup goal and the game’s only one, and it put Brazil into the semifinals.“It boosted my confidence completely,” he wrote in his autobiography. “The world now knew about Pelé.”Pelé in his debut game in 1975 with the New York Cosmos at Randalls Island Stadium.Barton Silverman/The New York TimesThe world now knew about Brazilian soccer, too. Pelé undoubtedly benefited from playing alongside other remarkably gifted ball-control artists — Garrincha, Didi and Vavá among them — as well as from Europe’s lack of familiarity with the Brazilian style.Most European teams used static alignments; players seldom strayed from their designated areas.Brazil, though, encouraged two of the four midfielders to behave like wingers when attacking. This forced opponents to cope quickly with four forwards, rather than two. Making things more difficult, the forwards often switched sides, right and left, and the outside fullbacks sometimes joined the attack. The effect dazzled onlookers, not to mention opponents.After the semifinal against France, in which Pelé scored a hat trick in a 5-2 Brazil win, the French goalkeeper reportedly said, “I would rather play against 10 Germans than one Brazilian.”The team went home to national acclaim, and Pelé resumed playing for Santos as well as for two Army teams as part of his mandatory military service. In 1959 alone, he endured a relentless schedule of 103 competitive matches; nine times, he played two games within 24 hours.Santos began to capitalize on his fame with lucrative postseason tours. In 1960, en route to Egypt, the team’s plane stopped in Beirut, where a crowd gathered threatening to kidnap Pelé unless Santos agreed to play a Lebanese team.“Fortunately, the police dealt with it firmly, and we flew on to Egypt,” Pelé wrote in his autobiography.He had become such a hero that, in 1961, to ward off European teams eager to buy his contract rights, the Brazilian government passed a resolution declaring him a nonexportable national treasure.Soccer DiplomacyWhen Pelé was about to retire from Santos in the early 1970s, Henry A. Kissinger, the United States secretary of state at the time, wrote to the Brazilian government asking it to release Pelé to play in the United States as a way to help promote soccer, and Brazil, in America.By then, two more World Cups, numerous international club competitions and tireless touring by Santos had made Pelé a global celebrity. So it was beyond quixotic when Toye, the Cosmos general manager, decided to try to persuade the player universally acclaimed as the world’s best, and highest paid, to join his team.The Cosmos had been born only a month earlier, in one afternoon, when all the players had gathered in a hotel at Kennedy International Airport to sign an agreement to play for $75 a game in a country where soccer was a minor sport at best.Toye first met with Pelé and Julio Mazzei, Pelé’s longtime friend and mentor, in February 1971 during a Santos tour in Jamaica. It took dozens more conversations over the next four years, as well as millions of dollars from Warner Communications, the team’s owner, for Pelé to join the Cosmos.During that period, he became the top scorer in Brazil for the 11th time, Santos won the 10th league championship of his tenure, and Pelé took heavy criticism for retiring from the national team and refusing to play in the 1974 World Cup, in West Germany. Toye made his last pitch in March 1975 in Brussels. Pelé had retired from Santos the previous October, and two major clubs, Real Madrid of Spain and Juventus of Italy, were each offering a deal worth $15 million, Pelé later recalled.“Sign for them, and all you can win is a championship,” Toye said he told Pelé. “Sign for me, and you can win a country.”To further entice him, Warner added a music deal, a marketing deal guaranteeing him 50 percent of any licensing revenue involving his name, and a guarantee to hire his friend Mazzei as an assistant coach. Pelé signed a three-year contract worth, according to various estimates, $2.8 million to $7 million (the latter equivalent to about $40 million today). Clive Toye, the general manager of the Cosmos, with Pelé after the soccer star signed with the team in 1975.Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesHe was presented to the news media on June 11, 1975, at the “21” Club in New York. Pandemonium ensued: Fistfights broke out among photographers, and tables collapsed when people stood on them.The hubbub continued when Pelé played his first North American Soccer League game, on June 15 at Downing Stadium on Randalls Island in the East River. It was a decrepit home; workers hastily painted its dirt patches green because CBS had come to televise the big debut. More than 18,000 fans, triple the previous largest crowd, shouldered their way in to watch.At every road game during Pelé’s three North American seasons, the Cosmos attracted enormous crowds and a press contingent larger than that of any other New York team, with many journalists representing foreign networks, newspapers and news agencies. Movie and music stars — including Mick Jagger, Robert Redford and Rod Stewart — showed up for home games, lured by Warner executives’ enthusiasm for their hot new talent.The Cosmos moved to Giants Stadium in Pelé’s final season, 1977, and there, in the Meadowlands, reached the pinnacle of their — and the league’s — popularity. For a home playoff game on Aug. 14, a crowd of 77,691 exceeded not only expectations but also capacity, squeezing into a stadium of 76,000 seats.That season, the Cosmos had added two more global superstars, Franz Beckenbauer of West Germany and Carlos Alberto of Brazil. (Later, in 1979, the Los Angeles Aztecs lured a third, Johan Cruyff of the Netherlands, to the league.) Soccer seemed poised to enter the American mainstream.But as it turned out, professional soccer was not yet ready to blossom in America, not even after the Cosmos won the 1977 league championship, in Seattle, or after Pelé’s festive farewell game in October, when he led the “Love!” chant and played one half for the Cosmos and the other half for the visiting team, his beloved Santos.The league had expanded to 24 teams, from 18, and lacked the financial underpinnings to sustain that many games and that much travel. Nor could other teams match the Cosmos’s spending on top-quality players. The league went out of business after the 1984 season.But at the grass-roots level, and in schools and colleges, soccer did take off. In 1991, the United States women’s national team won the first women’s World Cup. (The United States has won it three times since.) In 2002, the men’s national team made it to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. And Major League Soccer has established itself as a sturdy successor to the N.A.S.L. (In 2011, the inaugural season of a new minor league with the N.A.S.L. name included a New York Cosmos team, of which Pelé was named honorary president.) In June 2014, the city of Santos opened a Pelé Museum just before the start of the World Cup, the first held in Brazil since 1950. In a video recorded for the occasion, Pelé said, “It’s a great joy to pass through this world and be able to leave, for future generations, some memories, and to leave a legacy for my country.”Advocate for EducationPelé met Rosemeri Cholbi when she was 14 and wooed her for almost eight years before they married early in 1966. They had three children — Kelly Cristina, Edson Cholbi and Jennifer — before divorcing in 1982.After his divorce, Pelé often appeared in the gossip pages, partying with film stars, musicians and models. He acted in several movies, including John Huston’s “Victory” (1981), with Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone.It also emerged that he had fathered two daughters out of wedlock. One, Sandra, whom he had refused to acknowledge, later sued for the right to use his surname. She wrote a book, “The Daughter the King Didn’t Want,” which he said greatly embarrassed him. She died of cancer in 2006.His son, nicknamed Edinho, was a professional goalkeeper for five years before an injury ended his career. He later went to prison on a drug-trafficking conviction.In 1994, Pelé married Assiria Seixas Lemos, a psychologist and Brazilian gospel singer; their twins, Joshua and Celeste, were born in 1996. They divorced in 2008. In his later years he dated a Brazilian businesswoman, Marcia Aoki, and he married her in 2016.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.His brother Jair Arantes do Nascimento, who was known as Zoca and also played for Santos, died in 2020.Children always responded warmly to Pelé, and he to them. Neither big nor intimidating, he had a wide, easy smile and a deep, reassuring voice.“I have never seen another human being who was so willing to take the extra second to embrace or encourage a child,” said Jim Trecker, a longtime soccer executive who was the Cosmos’ public relations director in the Pelé years.Pelé greeting children during the inauguration of a soccer pitch in Rio de Janeiro in 2014.Silvia Izquierdo/APPelé was sensitive about having dropped out of school (he later earned a high school diploma and a college degree while playing for Santos) and often lamented that so many young Brazilians remained poor and illiterate even as the country had begun to prosper.Indeed, the day he scored his 1,000th goal, in November 1969 at Maracanã stadium in Rio before more than 200,000 fans, Pelé was mobbed by reporters on the field and used their microphones to dedicate the goal to “the children.” Crying, he made an impromptu speech about the difficulties of Brazil’s children and the need to give them better educational opportunities.Many journalists interpreted the gesture as grandstanding, but for decades, as if to correct the record, he cited that speech and repeated the sentiment. In July 2007, at a promotional event in New York for a family literacy campaign, he said, “Today, the violence we see in Brazil, the corruption in Brazil, is causing big, big problems. Because, you see, for two generations, the children did not get enough education.”(On the subject of correcting the record, research for his 2006 biography turned up additional games played, and the authors concluded that the famous 1,000th goal was actually his 1,002nd.)In London during the 2012 Olympics, Pelé joined a so-called hunger summit meeting convened by the British prime minister at the time, David Cameron, whose stated goal was to reduce by 25 million the number of children stunted by malnutrition before the Rio Olympics in 2016.Business and MusicPelé’s own venture into government began in 1995, when he was appointed Brazil’s minister for sport by then-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Pelé began a crusade to bring accountability to the business operations of Brazil’s professional teams, which were still run largely as gentlemen’s clubs, and to reform rules governing players’ contracts.In 1998, Pelé’s Law, as it was known, passed. It required clubs to incorporate as taxable for-profit corporations and to publish balance sheets. It required that players be 20 before signing a professional contract and gave them the right of free agency after two years (instead of after age 32).Many of the provisions were later weakened, and corruption continued, but Pelé said he took pride that the free agency clause had survived.Business deals gone awry plagued him throughout his life. He himself said he was often gullible, trusting friends who were less competent than they appeared. In 2001, a company he had helped found a decade earlier, Pelé Sports and Marketing, was accused of taking enormous loans to stage a charity game for Unicef and then not repaying the money when the game failed to happen. Pelé shut down the company; Unicef said there had been no wrongdoing on his part.While continuing to promote educational programs throughout his life, Pelé also pursued his musical avocation. He was never far from a guitar, and he carried a miniature tape recorder to capture tunes or lyrics as the mood struck him.He composed dozens of songs that were recorded by Brazilian pop stars, usually without his taking credit.Pelé relaxing during the World Cup in Mexico in 1970. Pursuing a musical avocation, he was never far from a guitar. Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos, via Getty Images“I didn’t want the public to make the comparison between Pelé the composer and Pelé the football player,” he told the British newspaper The Guardian in 2006. “That would have been a huge injustice. In football, my talent was a gift from God. Music was just for fun.”As he grew older, he often spoke of the difficulty of distinguishing between two personas: his real self, and the soccer superstar Pelé. He often referred to Pelé in the third person.“One of the ways I try to keep perspective on things,” he wrote in his autobiography, “is to remind myself that what people are responding to isn’t me, necessarily; it’s this mythical figure that Pelé has become.”His face remained familiar around the world long after his retirement from soccer. In 1994, when the World Cup was about to be played in the United States, Pelé sat in Central Park in New York waiting to be interviewed for ABC News. A teenager passed, did a double-take and then ran off; within minutes, people were streaming across the park to see him.“There were hundreds of them,” Toye wrote in his own memoir. “Seventeen years after he last kicked a ball, this dark-skinned man is sitting in deep, dark shade under the trees — but he is still recognized, and once recognized, never alone in any country on earth.” More

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      Brazil’s World Cup Hopes Fell Apart in 15 Minutes

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      AL RAYYAN, Qatar — They couldn’t believe it.On the sideline at Education City Stadium, forward Richarlison stared ahead. Pedro, another forward, hunched over with his hands on his knees. And the superstar Neymar, the man responsible for Brazil’s go-ahead goal, started crying, then sat at midfield and cried some more.Stunned and heartbroken, Brazil’s players struggled to process what had just transpired on the field and how they had blown a 1-0 lead against Croatia with 15 minutes left in extra time. Without a shot on goal to that point, Croatia pried the game from the jaws of defeat, tied the score in the 117th minute and then beat a leading World Cup favorite, 4-2, in a penalty shootout in the quarterfinals on Friday.After going 105 minutes without scoring, Brazil’s talented attack finally broke through a tough Croatian defense. Suddenly, it felt like all the pressure on Brazil had been lifted, its joy had returned and it just needed to play keep-away for the second period of extra time. But, then, it all unraveled so quickly and Croatia, the wily 2018 World Cup finalist that has excelled at winning penalty shootouts in the knockout stage, was victorious once again.“It’s hard to find the words to describe this moment,” Neymar said, pausing at times to compose himself as he spoke to reporters two hours after the final whistle.As Richarlison walked toward the team bus and stopped to talk to reporters, his eyes were still bright red from the earlier tears. “It hurts,” he said.Croatian players celebrated after Marquinhos missed Brazil’s last penalty kick.Petr David Josek/Associated PressRicharlison was one of many players on Brazil’s side who broke down in tears after the loss.Matthew Childs/ReutersBrazil may come to regret several moments of its loss to Croatia. How did Brazil fail to convert more of its 19 shots — 11 of them on goal — with all of its speed and dazzle? How could it not defend for the final 15-plus minutes of the game? And how could Brazil let two substitutes on a counterattack following a turnover — Mislav Orsic sprinting with the ball down the left side and then centering to Bruno Petkovic, who fired the shot — catch it off guard?A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Neymar, Brazil’s Star Player, Out With an Injury

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      Neymar, the Brazilian soccer star, will not be playing in the team’s next World Cup match after he was injured on Thursday while playing against Serbia.Neymar injured a lateral ligament on his right ankle and has small bone swelling, said Rodrigo Lasmar, the team’s doctor, in a written statement on Neymar’s website. Another player, Danilo, injured his left ankle and also will not play in the next game, which will be on Monday against Switzerland, the statement said.“I can say in advance that we will not have both players for the next match, but they remain in treatment with the objective of trying to recover them in time for this competition,” Lasmar said.Both players received treatment after the match and were re-evaluated on Friday morning, with scheduled daily follow-ups planned. Neymar’s ankle was visibly swollen as he walked off the field on Thursday.Brazil beat Serbia 2-0 in its first match of the 2022 World Cup. After Switzerland, the team will play Cameroon on Friday.“Tough game, but it was important to win,” Neymar said on Twitter on Thursday. “Congratulations team, first step taken.”Thursday’s injury was one of the hardest moments of his career, Neymar said on his Facebook page. In the 2014 World Cup, he broke a vertebra after being kneed in the back and was sidelined for the rest of the tournament.“Yes, I’m injured, it’s frustrating, it’s going to hurt,” he said in the Facebook post. “But I’m sure that I will have a chance to return because I will do whatever possible to help my country, my teammates and myself.” More

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      Neymar Is Still a Singular Star, but He Has More Help on Brazil

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      As Brazil begins its quest for a sixth World Cup, the team’s resources run deep — though Neymar still shoulders much of the load.LE HAVRE, France — As the announcer at the Stade Océane cycled through Brazil’s team on Friday, before the squad dismantled Ghana, 3-0, a murmur of appreciation greeted each familiar, stellar name. Alisson was granted gentle applause. Thiago Silva earned a respectful, admiring cheer. Raphinha drew a sizzle of anticipation.And then, leaving just a hint of a dramatic pause, the announcer came to Neymar.There were, perhaps, mitigating circumstances. The 30-year-old Neymar was, after all, on home turf, or something very close to it. Le Havre, a sleepy port town on the Normandy coast, sits just a couple of hours northwest of Paris. The stands were dotted not just with jerseys in Brazil’s bright canary yellow but with the rich, deep blue of his Paris St.-Germain club team, too.But still, the contrast in his reception and those of his teammates felt telling. Brazil’s squad shimmers with stars. Alisson may be the finest goalkeeper on the planet. Thiago Silva is probably the best defender of his generation. Casemiro was part of the most dominant midfield in modern history.Even among their number, though, Neymar stands out. Their fame is not comparable to his, not really; the excitement he engenders, the adoration he receives and the wonder he instills are of a different order of magnitude. It was Neymar who was picked out on the big screen, again and again, during warm-ups. It was Neymar who had to sing his national anthem with a camera no more than six inches from his face. In a team full of headline acts, he remains the undisputed main event, the leading character, the center of gravity.For now, at least. As the roar that had met Neymar’s name subsided, the announcer still had one player left to introduce. “Numéro vingt,” he said — “Vinicius Junior.” The cheer that followed was not quite so loud as Neymar’s. It did not last quite as long. But the difference was not so stark as might have been expected.Read More on the 2022 World CupA New Start Date: A last-minute request for the tournament to begin a day earlier was only the latest bit of uncertainty to surround soccer’s showcase event.Chile’s Failed Bid: The country’s soccer federation had argued Ecuador should be ejected from the tournament to the benefit of the Chilean team. FIFA disagreed.Golden Sunset: This year’s World Cup will most likely be the last for stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — a profound watershed for soccer.Senegalese Pride: Aliou Cissé, one of the best soccer coaches in Africa, has given Senegal a new sense of patriotism. Next up: the World Cup.With two months to go before the World Cup, Tite, the Brazil coach, would not have it any other way. It has been 20 years since Brazil was declared champion of the world; miss out again in Qatar, and the wait for a sixth crown will match the lacuna between the third and fourth.More troublingly still, in the past four tournaments, it has not really gone close: beaten comfortably by the French in 2006, the Dutch in 2010 and the Belgians in Russia four years ago. The team made the semifinals on home soil in 2014, of course, but the less said about how that particular story ended, from a Brazilian point of view, the better.That defeat, though, highlighted the problem that has beset Brazil for the past decade. Neymar was missing with an injury as Germany etched a scar on the national psyche in the Maracana in 2014 (joined on the sidelines, not insignificantly, by Thiago Silva). In his absence, Brazil seemed bereft, adrift, unable to conceive of how to win the game without its leading man, the player to whom the team, as much as the country, was in thrall.He was present in Russia, but he was subdued, his legs weary and his inspiration dulled, easily corralled by Belgium in the stifling heat. Still, though, Brazil continued to look to him, to hope that he might somehow lift himself, and carry them with him. If he could not, they did not seem to know who might.This time around, things should be different. Vinicius, a few months on from scoring the winning goal in a Champions League final, is surging, European soccer’s breakout star. His teammates and his nation have rallied around him in the aftermath of the racist abuse he has received in Spain for having the temerity to celebrate his goals; several fans had made their way to the Stade Océane to urge him to keep dancing.He is not alone. Brazil’s attacking resources run so deep that Tite did not even have to call up Gabriel Jésus and Gabriel Martinelli, Arsenal’s forwards, for his squad; he could afford to introduce Rodrygo, Vinicius’s Real Madrid teammate, with just a couple of minutes to go. Roberto Firmino did not even make it off the bench. For what may be the first time in his international career, Neymar does not need to feel that everything hinges on him.Perhaps his performance, then, can be explained by a newfound sense of freedom. Perhaps he is playing unfettered by the suffocating pressure that he has carried for so long. Perhaps, on what may be the strongest team that Brazil has boasted since 2002 — a team, certainly, more than capable of ending the country’s wait — he feels more comfortable, more capable of expressing himself.Whatever the reason, his display against Ghana was that of a man neither willing nor ready to vacate center stage. It would have been enough that he created two of Brazil’s three goals, both of them finished off by Richarlíson — Marquinhos scored the other, a thunderous header from a corner — but that was the reward for, rather than the total of, everything he did.Neymar, it is fair to say, looks different this season. He has now registered 11 goals and 10 assists in 12 games for club and country, a streak of form that makes it feel somehow deeply strange that roughly two months ago, not only did P.S.G. appear willing to sell him, but nobody seemed desperately keen to buy the most expensive player in the sport’s history.The raw numbers, as ever, are merely an illustration. There has been a sharpness, a poise and, perhaps most encouraging of all, an invention to Neymar over the past couple of months. Tite has said that he is “flying,” his “speed and execution in perfection sync.” Even Thierry Henry, habitually unimpressed, feels he has “come to tell everyone: Don’t forget me.”Against Ghana, it was there in his delivery, whip-smart and inch-perfect. It was there in the moments he sped up, feinting and shifting his weight and accelerating away from his opponents. And, most of all, it was there in the moments he slowed down. More than once, he found himself with the ball at his feet, in the penalty area, and he seemed to stop, to pause, before picking the right pass, the perfect pass, the one that carved Ghana open.That has always been Neymar’s gift: picking his moments. As the World Cup hovers into view, as that sixth star starts to exert a gravity on Brazil, he seems to have done it again. More