by Dom Smith

TO WRITE about Pele is to feel that you are not worthy of being the writer. The man is sacred in a world where few people are.

His death, at 82, following months battling bowel cancer and a long bedridden period, comes as no great surprise. A bit like his third World Cup trophy — which came in 1970 when he had already been the best player on the planet for 12 long years.
 
That third World Cup win marked Pele apart from anyone else — the first player to win three World Cups. To date, he remains the only man to do so.

Didier Deschamps came mightily close this month, nearly adding a second managerial triumph to his one winner’s medal as a player. But no. That accolade still belongs to Pele. To Pele alone.
 
For some, perhaps that is what makes him great. That is his differentiator. But the greatness of the Brazilian forward amounted to a great deal more than that.

He is football’s all-time leading goalscorer, with many databases crediting him with having scored a barely imaginable 1,281 goals in 1,363 matches across a 21-year career.
 
With Brazil, he won not only the 1958 World Cup as a skinny 17-year-old, but also the 1962 and 1970 editions. His national team career took in 92 internationals, and he is the country’s joint top scorer, tied on 77 goals with his long-time friend Neymar.
 
The 5ft 8in striker was born in 1940 as Edson Arantes do Nascimento, named after the US innovator Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb. But it was to be Edson, not Edison, whose legacy shone brightest once their days were over.
 
Pele only gained his nickname from a mispronunciation of his favourite Brazilian footballer, Bile.

From the moment he could walk, Pele and football were intertwined. Now they are all but synonyms.

Lionel Messi may well go down as the greatest footballer who ever lived — and rightly so — but only one person is football personified: Pele.

He was not only a stupendous technician and a marvellous goalscorer, but from his playing days right up until his death, a great advert for the game and ambassador for the sport.
 
If one Pele moment sticks out, it ought not to be a goal, but rather a skill in which he didn’t even touch the ball and which led to him hacking a shot well wide of the target. Yes, really.
 
Brazil reached the 1970 final by beating Uruguay 3–1 at the semi-final stage.

When Tostao put him through one-on-one with goalkeeper Ladislao Mazurkiewicz with an angled pass, Pele saw Mazurkiewicz expected a touch and so simply allowed the ball to fly past the goalkeeper one way while he sprinted round him the other.

He was reacquainted with the ball once the keeper was out of sight.
 
In that single moment, the genius of Pele was encapsulated. Pace, precision, and a deft understanding of the game only possible by playing the sheer number of hours of football that he clocked up in his youth.

Not a great deal of Pele’s youth was spent doing youthful things — because of his emerging brilliance.
 
Few people say they were ever a world champion. Pele achieved the feat at 17. He was a freak of nature, and for many years the only remotely acceptable answer to the question of who was the greatest footballer ever to live. Not that people considered it much.
 
It is a symptom of the polarising, poll-taking, hero-to-zero-making era in which we live that the GOAT (greatest of all time) debate has even come to be.

The goat is an ugly animal and the GOAT debate a crude and crass way to think about sport. It also disrespects Pele’s record.
 
The supposed problem for Pele is that he never played in Europe, only left the Brazilian league for the United States in his later years, and a great many of his goals came in matches for which there is little data, and thus little chance of verifying whether he actually did score them.
 
But the fact of the matter is: Pele’s Santos were the greatest club side in the world for much of his time there. And they beat many European giants in that time.

Plus, the European club game was not the only football that actually matters in the same way Twitter would have you believe it is today.

With 1,200 goals in his back pocket or even a measly 700, Pele is a football legend who transcends his sport in a way few others can — and whose greatness ensured he came to symbolise sport itself before any other footballer did.
 
Some say he should have won more than three Copa Libertadores titles (the South American Champions League). But due to his Santos side touring Europe, he only played in three editions.

Across that time, he registered 17 goals and 11 assists in 15 games. The allegation falls by the wayside all of a sudden. Frankly, almost all criticisms of Pele’s achievements can be contextually rubbished, because almost all criticisms of Pele’s achievements are contextually ignorant.
 
Until Pele came along, it was the Hungarian striker Ferenc Puskas and the Argentine-born Spanish forward Alfredo Di Stefano who were considered the best players in football history.
 
Then Puskas faced Brazil’s deified No 10. After retiring, he said: “The greatest player in history was Di Stefano. I refuse to classify Pele as a player. He was above that.” Everyone knew he was something altogether superior.
 
Pele once said: “Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.”

The slender striker from the slums of Sao Paulo had a boundless enthusiasm for football, and the way he expressed that enthusiasm enchanted millions.

Now he is revered by billions. The king of football is dead, but his legacy will cease to expire.