The day I met a teenage Pel?, ‘the greatest advertisement Brazil ever had’

Read More

Renato Carvalho was 11 years old when he met Pel? for the first and only time.

It was 1958 and he was a schoolboy in a small city called Po?os de Caldas. To the amazement of him and his friends, the Brazilian team were preparing for the World Cup on his school pitch.

“Pel? was so thin, he was just a young boy of 17,” Carvalho recalled. “But I’ll never forget it.”

Pel? died on Thursday aged 82, 65 years after that skinny 17-year-old guided Brazil to their first World Cup title in Sweden. Pel? scored six goals in the quarter-final, semi-final and final, and set Brazil on a march that led to three World Cup wins in 12 years.

He remains the only player to hold three World Cup winner’s medals.

“Pel? was the greatest advertisement Brazil ever had,” Carvalho, now 76 and a retired businessman, said shortly after hearing that Pel? had died. “Brazil hit the headlines because of Pel?.

“It was Pel?, with his art and his football, who spread the name of Brazil around the world.”

The former Santos and New York Cosmos star died at S?o Paulo’s Alberto Einstein hospital at 3.27pm on Thursday, the consequence of what the hospital said was “multiple organ failure”.

He had been in and out of the hospital for more than a year, after doctors found a tumour in his colon. His body stopped responding to the treatment weeks ago but even though his death was expected, there was still a huge outpouring of goodwill.

The Brazilian government led the tributes, tweeting: “Football perfection; the King was almost synonymous with his homeland. Generations to come will remember him as a gentleman off the field, and a magician on it.”

Brazil’s incoming president, Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, said he believed Pel? would join a heavenly kickabout with football greats such as Garrincha, Socrates and Maradona.

“Few Brazilians carried our country’s name so far,” Lula tweeted. “However different their language was to Portuguese, foreigners from all over the planet always found a way of pronouncing the magic word: ‘Pel?’.”

Carvalho agreed, remembering that Pel?’s victorious side, the team that won three out of four World Cups, put the country on the map. Before 1958, many people knew next to nothing about Brazil. After 1970, it was forever the nation of football.

“Brazil in 1958 hadn’t achieved the glory they achieved soon after,” Carvalho said. “There was no TV, we used to listen to games on a radio that stood on a stand in the corner. We had no idea who Pel? was or who he’d become.”

Carvalho’s memories of playtimes with legends remain vivid. He remembers Pel? as quiet; Gylmar, a brooding goalkeeper; Zagallo the wingback who would become the first man to win a World Cup as a player and manager, the latter when he coached his old pal Pel? to success in Mexico City in 1970.

“They trained taking penalties and we used to stand behind the goals,” Carvalho said. “There was a player called Mazzola and he had a powerful shot. We were terrified. They said that if Mazzola’s shot hit you, it would kill you, and so when he ran up to strike the ball we all lay on the ground because we didn’t want to die.”

Pel? was famously humble and many others have personal stories to tell. But Pel?’s time was long ago and football has changed. The sadness is real but most people believe there won’t be millions on the street to see his coffin go by, as happened when Diego Maradona died in Argentina in 2020.

“When Ayrton Senna died [in 1994] the whole world came to a halt,” said Donyy Alves, a 41-year-old receptionist. “That won’t happen with Pel?. Football is so corrupt that people just don’t believe in it any more. They don’t love the national team like they used to. They’re tired of it all.”

Carvalho agreed. “I think people will take his death more naturally,” he said. “Pel?’s success was a long time ago. People obviously know who he is but they don’t know him that well, so his death is a more natural thing.”