Edson Arantes do Nascimento (23 October 1940 – 29 December 2022), better known by his nickname Pelé, was a Brazilian professional footballer. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, he was among the most successful and popular sports figures of the 20th century.
Pelé began playing for the Santos FC team at age 15 and the Brazil national team at 16. During his international career, he won The World Cup three times: 1958, 1962 and 1970, the only player to do so and the youngest player to win a World Cup (17). He was nicknamed O Rei ("The King") following the 1958 tournament. His 1,279 goals in 1,363 games (including friendlies) is recognised as a Guinness World Record, and with 77 goals in 92 games for Brazil's national team in particular, Pelé held the record as the national team's top goalscorer for over fifty years.note At club level, he is Santos's all-time top goalscorer with 643 goals in 659 games, leading the club to the 1962 and 1963 Copa Libertadores, and to the 1962 and 1963 Intercontinental Cup. Pelé's penchant for visually flashy plays and spectacular goals made him a global star, being credited with coining the phrase jogo bonito ("The Beautiful Game") to describe his (and Brazil in general's) playing style, and his teams toured internationally to take full advantage of his popularity. During his playing days, Pelé was for a period the best-paid athlete in the world. After retiring in 1977, Pelé was a worldwide ambassador for football and made many acting and commercial ventures. In 2010, he was named the honorary president of the New York Cosmos, the team he played for the last three years of his active career.
In Brazil, he was hailed as a national hero for his accomplishments in football and for his outspoken support of policies that improve the social conditions of the poor. His emergence at the 1958 World Cup, where he became a black global sporting star, was also a source of inspiration. Throughout his career and in his retirement, Pelé received numerous individual and team awards for his performance on the field, his record-breaking achievements, and his legacy in the sport: In 1999, he was named Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee and was included in the Time list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. In 2000, Pelé was voted World Player of the Century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) and was one of the two joint winners of the FIFA Player of the Century, alongside Argentinian player Diego Maradona.
Pelé in media
Comic Books- A series of children's comics called Pelezinho was produced by Mauricio de Sousa and was produced between the 70s and 80s.
Film — Live-Action
- Pelé actually translated his worldwide fame into acting in the film Escape to Victory, alongside Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine, where he plays Luis Fernandez, a Trinidadian player. There are actually several professional association football players playing characters in the film, but Pelé's character is clearly the most prominent among them.
- An oddity in Pelé's film appearances is his role in the 1980 Brazilian crime film Os Trombadinhas ("The Pickpockets"), where he plays a fictionalized version of himself; namely, he appears as a Santos FC youth coach who is enlisted by a businessman into temporarily joining the police to investigate a ring of juvenile thieves in downtown São Paulo. One scene from the film, in which a female criminal asks him out of disbelief, "You, are you Pelé?", and Pelé replies, "No, I'm Jô Soares
, bitch!", became an internet meme in Brazil.
- Pelé: Birth of a Legend is a 2016 Biopic based off the football legend, specifically from his early childhood in Brasil, to leading the country's national team to their first ever World Cup victory in 1958. The real Pelé even makes a Real-Person Cameo, as well as provides the film's closing narration.
Video Games
- Metroid's protagonist Samus Aran is named after a mishearing of Pelé's full name. Developer Hiroji Kiyotake thought his first name was "Samus", not "Edson".
Western Animation
- He actually makes several cameos in The Simpsons: In "The Cartridge Family", he spoke (voiced by Hank Azaria) before a soccer match between Mexico and Portugal which was held in Springfield and attended by the Simpson family, and in "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)" he is among the many celebrities credited in the Film Within the Show The Poke of Zorro, being credited as playing "Hiccuping Narrator".