Opinion
These pages are normally reserved for sports fans. People read them for the shared experience of being moved by the power of sport, not to be convinced of it.
There are a few athletes who manage to transcend their own sport, whose appeal and power is so compelling that their fans require no grouping – they are simply people.
Pelé was one of these athletes. He was loved by many and known by all. So well-known, in fact, that he needed neither last name nor descriptor to identify him as the soccer-playing legend that he lived and died as.
In the wake of his death, Pelé is being hailed as a peerless talent. On the pitch he indeed outshone team-mates and opponents alike, but I would argue his peers were not limited to soccer.
Pelé is perhaps best comparable to Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan. Athletes, or rather figures, who became icons by virtue of their greatness. A word that has been re-defined by their existence, re-purposed to best explain them. They were the greatest. They still are.
As tributes are paid to Pelé and attempts made to summarise his life, there is debate over exactly how many goals he scored over the span of his career. It was over 1000 but was it over 1200? The estimations miss the point – for Pelé’s contribution to the sport there is no metric. A life measured in achievements is the same as a career measured in goals – quantifiable but insufficient in capturing the essence of what it really was.
Pele is one of the greatest footballers in history. (Photo credit STAFF/AFP via Getty Images)
The Brazilian’s life and what he did with it is best comprehended through the imperfect and incomplete memories of the people who watched him from all around the world. His legacy, more than the number of World Cups he won, is that of being revered by so many and remembered for so long. He retired in 1977 but his game never aged.
People loved the way he played. They still do.
It is a peculiar difficulty of a sportswriter to get people to care about sports when they are not already so inclined. But understanding the rules of a game is not a pre-requisite to liking it – athletes like Pelé prove this. His universality lies in the uniqueness of being both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.
He was a dark-skinned kid, who grew up with next to nothing, kicking around socks stuffed with paper or rags fashioned into a ball. His humble beginnings made him relatable, disadvantage being a point of commonality among most of his fans. Pelé elevated the idea of adversity by overcoming it. His success felt like a personal triumph but one that fans could share in.
It was celebrated by the people. It still is.
A tribute in The Guardian was published several hours after Pelé’s death was announced and in it a fan writes: “Tonight I have shed more than a few tears, for the loss of someone I never knew or met.”
This, and sentiments like it, come fairly close to describing what Pelé’s departure means to me and the rest of the world. We did not know him but it didn’t matter either, his death signifies a loss on a different scale. He was arguably the greatest soccer player in the world and for most of my life that fact mattered enough to me that it felt personal. It still does.
Pelé, the man, may be gone but his enduring legacy is and will remain immortal.
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