Pele. The path of the lonely king

My grandfather told me about how Pele plays. He was at the famous Brazil match against the USSR national team in 1965, when the visiting Brazilians won a landslide victory with a crushing 3-0 score. I, still very young, remembered one thing from the whole long table story - Pele played in such a way that it was impossible to approach him. This was later confirmed by the Soviet footballers, in particular, Valery Voronin, who guarded him: “What kind of foul is there? We couldn't get close to him...

Later, I realized that this is probably why Pele was called the king of football. After all, the retinue plays the king. The retinue itself determined that this person is special, and special treatment is required for him on the field. Even Pele himself noted how the players of the Czechoslovak national team, knowing that he was recovering from an injury, did not play tough against him. “I will never forget the nobility of Czech footballers,” he recalled.

According to the king, football itself began to measure its new stars. In my opinion, there were four equal or almost equal to him in history: Cruyff, Maradona, Zidane and Messi. The rest, albeit the strongest players, are in the second tier. This five is distinguished by the quality that I have already mentioned - being on the field, as it were, with oneself, or, if you like, one on one with the Game, when there are no rivals and there are only partners, and it does not matter which partners, just it is important that there is someone with whom you can play around and continue to create. Or maybe let them score. How great Pele did it in the 1970 World Cup final, when he rolled the ball under the blow of the captain, defender Carlos Alberto, who was running across the entire field. Noble gesture of the king...

What kind of person was Pele? I don't know. He was king. He wasn't a brawler like Maradona, he wasn't a brawler like Zidane, he wasn't autistic like Messi, he wasn't a lover of money like Cruyff. He was Pele.

He never coached anyone. Moreover, he made incorrect predictions on the eve of every World Cup. He called his followers players who then did not turn out to be such. Pele lived easily, as he played, realizing that everything he could do was given to him from above, but it could have been given to someone else.

There have never been scandals and excessive attention around Pele. He clearly understood that he was nobody off the field, and he remained the king there in the 50-70s with a soccer ball in the stadium. He left like a king and out of life. Without burdening anyone with himself, he said goodbye to his relatives and after a few days he stopped breathing. As in the field, in the last hour he did not let anyone get too close to him, following the Creator alone.

Artem ZHOLKOVSKY, for Dynamo.kiev.ua