Pelé died: business, politics and a king of relationships, this was his life after football

Public relations. Business. Management functions (was Brazil’s sports minister during the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso). Tireless traveller. After his retirement from professional competitions, Pelé, who passed away this Thursday at the age of 82, has remained very active, mainly in promotional and commercial activities. He has started several businesses, some successful, some unsuccessful.

Expansao magazine had predicted that “it will be difficult for him to have such a sensational career in business as in football. A sports genius is not a business genius. It is that already in his days as a player he had launched several initiatives and ended badly with partners and representatives, the first of which was a controversial Spanish immigrant known as Pepe Gordo. They bought a construction company and a medical supplies distributor, but went bankrupt.

“A bitter experience,” Pelé himself described it. Then Julio Mazzei would arrive. Pepe Gordo had fired: “Pelé needs to be dominated. I ordered it before. Then his wife. And now he is a prisoner of his own company.

Even as a player he received several he offers to promote products, even if he is careful not to do it with cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. With the president of his own club Vasco Fae, of Santos, he was “partner” in commercial matters. In recent times at Santos, Pelé had advertising contracts with Pepsi, Puma, manufacturers of televisions, batteries and clothing. He expanded it to bicycles, dairy products, real estate. They calculated 60 properties distributed throughout São Paulo.

But when he made one of his most controversial decisions – which was to return to professional football to play with the New York Cosmos – some pointed out that this was due to strictly economic issues – many of his businesses had gone bankrupt – and not to the ambition of ” open a transfer market”, as he had pointed out. “I am not aware of Pele’s private life and investments. I can only say that he had higher offers than the Cosmos and he refused them. Here the important thing is not the money, but his interest in leaving an influence on North American football,” said Clive Toye, director of the Cosmos.

The post-football Pelé was almost interminable. He kept real estate investments, but also dabbled in media, advertising, and clothing. As both promoter and official he had tough fights, most remembered with one of his mentors, João Havelange. However, around 1994 he was considered “the best PR in the world”.