A mid the pain of losing Pele, it is perhaps appropriate that the start of his final health crisis, and maybe his last fully lucid days, happened while the ball was rolling in Qatar. It was a time when so many illustrious names of football were gathered in one place, from where the game could pass on a collective message of love and respect to the man who did more than anyone else to establish the World Cup as the most gripping sporting event on the planet.
In 1950, a poor black nine-year-old from a small town in Brazil was shocked to see his father in tears as he listened on the radio to his country’s traumatic World Cup defeat to Uruguay. Twenty years later all that had been avenged. With Pele as a spearhead, Brazil had won the trophy three times. They had become synonymous with the beautiful game, and Pele, born just over half a century after his country had finally abolished slavery, was its undisputed king. And, largely on the back of these achievements, the World Cup had become an enormous, made-for-TV affair, bringing much of the planet to a standstill for an entire month once every four years.
Mexico ’70 is crucial to this process. Pele’s fourth and last World Cup was the
