Editor’s Note: Amy Bass is professor of sport studies at Manhattanville College and the author of “One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together” and “Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete,” among other titles. The views expressed here are solely hers. Read more opinion on CNN.
CNN
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It would be a shame if all that was left to say about Pelé was an assembly of clichéd phrases trying to summarize an unparalleled life, an unprecedented career.
But as news of his death at 82 began to spread throughout the world, it seemed as though there was nothing to write that hadn’t been written; nothing to say that hadn’t been said.
Just as Pelé — born Edson Arantes do Nascimento — never needed an introduction, he now needs no explanation, an athlete who transcended his sport and yet wore it on his sleeve; a Brazilian who transcended his country, and yet never left.
Growing up in poverty in Bauru, Pelé learned the game from his father, using a stuffed sock or a grapefruit as a ball. In 1958, at just 17 years old, he erupted on the international pitch, becoming the youngest to score in a FIFA World Cup match and, with victory over host Sweden in the final, he put Brazil on the global sports map – an international icon born.
Indeed, Pelé, observes historian Brenda Elsey in an essay about South American soccer, “transcended national identity to embody an image of Pan-African success,” perhaps especially when members of Santos FC toured Nigeria and Mozambique in the 1960s. “That the leaders of the Brazilian team also came from impoverished neighborhoods and difficult circumstances,” argues Elsey, “created solidarity with players across the Global South.”
While committed to country and team — he stayed with Brazil’s Santos FC for some 19 years, scoring 643 goals in 659 games (despite lucrative offers coming from the likes of Paris St. Germain and Real Madrid, and a scrapped deal from Inter Milan because of fan protests in Brazil) — he also existed as a singular figure, the greatest of all time with his unparalleled record of three World Cup championships (1958, 1962, 1970) and, according to Guinness World Records (and let’s be clear: his…
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