Goodbye Pele, you made us happy, even our opponents

It’s never good to die, but if you have to die, let it be the right place. Actors on stage, piano musicians and football players during or immediately after a World Cup. that’s how it went Pele, finally defeated by cancer, who achieved what stopper and free could not, kicks and elbows, pushes and holds, simple hunters of shinbones and fibulae. They removed him from the field but never from popular memory, which has been building the mausoleum that corresponds to him for some time. Goodbye Pele. You made us happy, even the opponents.

The kids have no idea what it was. It is the task of the elders to explain to them that what they play at Play, Pelé has been doing on the field, really and with constant repetition, for almost two decades. Those of us who have embarked on the useless discussion of whether he was more or less than Maradona are wasting time. Because Pelé was that, the man of his time. Like Di Stéfano before, like Cruyff and Diego later, like Messi now. The only ones allowed to sit at the same table. The rest, players of different quality but close to the category of the God of the ball, can hardly be the waiters who bring the dishes to that table. You will go out.

How did Pele play? He played like you can’t play. Perfect. Born poor from all misery, the son of a footballer frustrated by an injury, he was a teenager with a sinewy physique who, by dint of the gym and certainly more, had developed a prodigious body. I’ll take it Saints and put Santos on the map. Always in white, he took the place of Don Alfredo and if the Argentine was the banner of Real Madrid, the Brazilian was the flagship of that Santos multiple champion of his country, two times champion of the Libertadores and globetrotter of a permanent world tour squad in friendlies in any geography and in armed tournaments as an excuse to see the top man by a fabulous team.

He directed, dominated, dribbled and shot left or right. He had a spring in his weight, a 360-degree gaze and a natural intuition that allowed him to anticipate every play. As Cruyff, the other father of football, said, “You don’t have to be fast, you have to get there first”. Pele always arrived first. And he fixed it quickly. Always good. go to youtube.

It was bad. He hit if they hit him. In the 64 Nations Cup, Toto Lorenzo gave Messiano his personal best. Pelé got fed up and with a head he broke through the wall of Messiano, who had to leave the field. Telch came on for him, scoring twice to extend the lead Ermindo Onega had extended to 3-0 after Amadeo saved Gerson from the penalty spot. When Pele saw that Messianus was leaving and that Rattin was going to take care of him, he confronted him and said “No ball, no Rat, huh, please.” They had known each other since the Copa Libertadores final when Santos won both games and at the Bombonera he was left in his underwear to change into shorts ripped by one of many rips.

It was 10. He took 10 and scored it. The story is little known. Brazil went to the World Cup in Sweden and handed over their player list but did not assign them numbers. The bureaucratic time for completing the ballots had run out in times when the World Cup was made by hand and an Italian Fifa official worked out the designation of the numbers. to you you you. That’s why goalkeeper Gilmar was number 3, Garrincha took number 11 on the right wing and Zagallo, on the left, used number 7. He gave Pele number 10 just because. And so he stayed forever. The best should use 10.

Known stories: he dazzled in Sweden, he almost missed playing in Chile due to injury, the Portuguese sent him off to England and he was Baremboin in Mexico.

He passed through Argentina many times. In the final with Boca. In the tie-break of another Cup with Peñarol at the World Cup he yelled goal before bringing it down with his chest and shoot Mazurkiewicz. Against Independiente, also for the Libertadores. On the night when the Colón stadium became the Elephant Cemetery, when Vélez inaugurated its lighting and as he posed with Daniel Willington, the Fortineros fans sang “and you see, he’s Pelé’s brother”, so Beto Alonso was the “white Pelé” for those of River. Every January it hosted the famous “summer tournaments” in the now defunct San Martín stadium in Mar del Plata. And many other times that hidden memory.

Pelé met Diego in his apartment in Copacabana in April 1979 when Guillermo Blanco, then a journalist for El Gráfico, took Maradona to meet O Rei. Then they had a back-and-forth, love-hate, mutual jealousy relationship. “Debuted with a little boy” was Pelusa’s macho offense, celebrated ad nauseum by fools. Pele has never been so brutal, but he also threw darts at Pelusa. He encouraged him with short messages in the worst moments of Diego’s health. And he mourned his death, of course. He looked at himself in the mirror, slower but also inexorable.

Shakespeare died and there was still the theater, Mozart died and the music continued to play. Borges died and literature continued. Pele is dead.