Pele’s last goal: he kicked Messi out of the front pages

Pele had to die to put an end to the nauseating exaltation of Lionel Messi who turns water into wine, resurrects the Argentine dead and ascends to heaven to sit at Father Diego’s left. Pelé had to die for us to suspend the increasingly boring debate about who is the strongest ever, Maradona, Leo or Cristiano Ronaldo. Pele had to die to remember that modern football (understood as a game, not as bullshit entertainment in heated stadiums where you can’t make offensive chants) exists because he existed, played, invented and above all won three World Cups, as a kid and as a grown man. Have some.
The best ever for me remains George Best, but like Pelé there really was and maybe there will never be anyone again – and peace also to Pelé politician and Blatter’s friend, nobody is perfect. Here’s to him, who avoided us for a few days reading articles about how decisive Messi was in the Argentine locker room at the World Cup or about his Italian origins (false family trees of La Pulce have been published for days, whose grandfather was already born in six or seven different places, from Bergamo to Sardinia).