Xuxa and her love with Pelé: from “I told him I was a minor” to “he cheated on me too much”

The death of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pele, shook the whole world. The sporting life of what for many was the best footballer of all time is the one that stands out in every sense, but also his intimacy, his private life, is something that has been talked about and written a lot. And in this respect, her volcanic romance with child chauffeur Xuxa in the 80s is always a terrain to explore.

Xuxa Meneghel is one of the biggest popular references in Brazil. She currently lives repeating that she can no longer devote herself to children on TV: at 59 she is not a question of age but of a “new paradigm”: “The guys look for the platforms, other forms of entertainment, I don’t know if that would work.”

In January 2021, the presenter who made a boom in Argentina in the 90s for her television show on Telefe, made a direct Instagram (an account in which she has more than 12 million followers) and He remembered his courtship with Pele.

In an interview with journalist Luis Erlanger, she commented: “He was an important person for me, maybe my first love. He was someone I met at the age of 17. Everyone with me was like, ‘Wow, how is she in love with her?'”

The host recalled how he met the football icon. “It was during a rehearsal for a magazine cover. There were four models, me, Luiza, Marcia Brito and it was supposed to be a black woman, but he didn’t want to. At that time they put on Miss Brazil, who was from Brasilia , in the photo I went out in front of him”.

But the crush was mutual and things didn’t end with that photo production. Xuxa said Pele approached her after the rehearsal. “He invited me to dinner, I told him I couldn’t, because I lived far away and I told him she was a minor. So he called home and my dad hung up thinking it was a joke.”

One time the family accepted there were departures and a relationship began that lasted five years.

The driver has finally revealed the reasons for the breakup. “He cheated on me, said it was an open relationship, but open only to him, among other things. When I turned 23, my life was changing a lot.”

In that direct Instagram of 2021, his followers highlighted the fact that he told the situation “naturally” and without reviewing his behavior. “He was a minor. How does a family take it normal that a 40-year-old man invites a 17-year-old and today at least she doesn’t revisit that past?asked one user. The debate grew.

In other interviews “The queen of shorties” had lashed out against the figure of the former footballer. “I was cheated on all the time. When I looked at it, she had lipstick on her mouth that wasn’t mine. It was normal for him. He once told me ‘it’s women who want to be with Pele’. I started thinking it was normal to be cheated on.”

“He deceived me too much, to the point that those women he cheated on me with were in the same place I was, and everyone knew it except me, of course. He wrote a book and detailed the women he was with at the same time we were together. Pelé also said that I was ‘the colorful friendship’, as if we had an open relationship, and I swear I never knew”.