Pele's Extraordinary Football Legacy

 Pele's Extraordinary Football Legacy

Edson Arantes Do Nascimento Pele of Brazil celebrates the victory after winnings the 1970 World Cup in Mexico match between Brazil and Italy at Estadio Azteca on 21 June in Città del Messico. Mexico(Image-Getty)

One day the big name was so small and easy because it will be on people's lips! It happened by accident. Edson Arantes do Nascimento was named after the famous inventor Thomas Edison by his parents. That's what happened. It was actually in the bill. Because of his great goalkeeping in the children's games, his friends started calling Edson after a famous goalkeeper in Brazil at that time, "Bill". Basically to catch a friend. The bill was paid by word of mouth.

Brazilian striker Pele (front) runs with the ball past a Swedish defender of the Malmoe FF soccer club during an international friendly between Malmoe FF and the Brazilian national team in Malmoe, Sweden, 8 May 1960. Brazil won 7-1. Pele became famous when he played with the Brazilian national team at the 1958 FIFA World Cup in Sweden and won the first World Champion title for Brazil.(Image-Getty)

How could Edson Arantes do Nascimento think that the name 'Pele', which he disliked so much, would one day become so famous! So much so that it would be difficult to find a person in the world who has not heard that name. Famous only plays football. Has anyone else played football like that! That is the main reason why you are hearing so much about Pele after he left this mortal world at the age of 82. As the only footballer to win three World Cups, score more than a thousand goals—these are certainly reasons. But the man named Pele would have gone so crazy, wars would have stopped to watch him play, the real reason was his incredible creativity. Most of the time, he did something beyond what everyone thought a footballer could possibly do in a particular situation on the field. The rest of life was in the eye of the beholder.

Some qualities of a great footballer are rare. Yet each has its own strengths. Weakness too. Some have better right foot and some have better left foot. Some are very good dribblers and some have excellent headwork. Some are good scorers, some make the game. A rare, very rare footballer has it all. Some more, some less. Pele is the rarest of the rare, who has almost nothing.

Weakness says that there was nothing. Not just two legs and head, he played football with his whole body. In a flash, that skin ball would have been subjugated to him by some magic spell. That can be said about many other great footballers. What Pele had extra was that imagination.

He did all such actions on the football field, later he said in the video that he was surprised, how I made the decision in a fraction of a second! Pele became Pele because of his extraordinary inventiveness and the courage to apply it in the field. They are not premeditated decisions, but immediate on-the-ground decisions. Carlos Alberto, the Brazilian captain who won the World Cup in 1970, embodied the glory of Pele in one line, 'Pele means improvisation.'

Not always successful. But the audience would go crazy at the exhibition of strange ideas. Otherwise, the two greatest examples of Pele's innovative thinking, neither of them would have been realized. Both in the 1970 World Cup. The first was against Czechoslovakia. Czech goalkeeper Viktor had a habit of standing slightly forward from the goal line. Pele realized that the shot he took from 65 yards away in his own boundary, which narrowly missed the goal, may have been one of the reasons. People would think of him as superhuman! Still, Pele's quickness of thought, his audacity to make the impossible seem possible, baffled the rest of the field.

The other is more fancy. Experts were not satisfied even calling Pele's move in the quarter-final against Uruguay a 'adventure of strange thinking', 'a joyous foray into the impossible', 'one of the greatest expressions of human creativity'. A cross through ball came from the left. Uruguayan goalkeeper Mazerquez, Ball and Pele are in the same straight line. What can you do if you get it now! What he did was unimaginable. If he played dummy, he let the ball go in the direction he was going and ran straight. The goalkeeper lost his balance and grabbed the air. And Pele ran and took the ball behind the goalkeeper. A defender sees the first post and turns the ball towards the second post with an incredible twist of the waist. The ball rolled wide of the post by an inch. Mazerquez later said he had never experienced such an experience in his playing career. He was so shocked that he lost consciousness for a while.

Majerquez's word is great for Pele. There has been such an expansion. As Bobby Charlton once said, football may have been made for this magical player. Italy's defender Tarsizio Bergomich, Brazil's opponent in the 1970 World Cup final, said better, 'I was saying to myself, "He's a man of flesh and blood like me." I misunderstood.'

A part of the conversation between the two panelists on the ITV World Cup panel during that World Cup has become a classic.

Malcolm Allison, 'How Do You Spell Pele?' Pat Crandall, 'Easy. G-o-d.'

Throughout his playing career, Pele has kept people in awe. As long as he played, he considered it his duty to spread joy to the audience. Football was to him the purest form of joy—the beautiful game. The couplet 'jogo bonito' is so famous because of him. Pele used the word for the first time. Not just instant gratification, his impact on the game is far-reaching. It is doubtful whether football could have become such a popular sport if not for Pele. He also did the work of making football a vehicle of joy in an era of extreme decadence. Pele blossomed in the 60s when indiscriminate beatings, tackles from behind were legal on the football field. I don't know how much more he would do if he didn't get protection like now!

What he did is still surprising. He did all the characteristics of the next generation of great footballers long ago. All you can find is a search on YouTube. football watch