He wasn’t just a demigod in Brazil, but the first truly global football star
In the final seconds of the 1958 World Cup final, with Brazil already 4-2 ahead, Pelé, then just 17 years old, received a long ball near the Swedish penalty area. He caught it on his chest, stunning it so smartly that the ball dropped at his feet. He stepped over the ball and effortlessly back-heeled it to a team mate. With the crowd still cheering this, the ball was lobbed back into the area and, insouciantly, Pelé flicked it with the side of his head into the goal. Within moments, Brazil had won their first World Cup, making the nation’s identity, then better known for coffee, synonymous with football. Pelé, reduced to floods of tears on the pitch, began his life as the embodiment of Brazilian football.
It is worth recalling how much was riding on this moment for Brazil. The country’s scintillating Afro-Brazilian stars, such as Leônidas, first caught the world’s attention at the 1938 World Cup. Commentators at the time suggested that the country’s hybrid Afro-Indian-European demography was the greatest strength behind its football and culture. The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was meant to cement this notion, but the shock defeat to Uruguay in the final game – the Maracanazo – was read as a failure of the country’s modernisation and its pathological miscegenation; the black players were made scapegoats for the defeat and racist stereotypes were reactivated. In 1958 the curse was lifted. Brazil’s super-diverse squad had become champions playing in their own unique style; Pelé was the star, and the world took notice.
David Goldblatt is the author of The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football and The Game of Our Lives
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