Pel’s story: O Rei, three times world champion, unique in football

Telling about Pel (footballingly) in a complete way, like trying to condense the Divine Comedy in a Hollywood film. Limiting, at best. This is why sometimes to evoke the sporting events of a great character, it is legitimate to start from the end. Sumptuous and epochal that of Edson Arantes do Nascimento (born in 1940). Black Brazilian, with a more than luminous career: shining.
Still considered the strongest footballer of all time (he was in competition with Maradona in the 80s and Messi in recent years). Just on October 1st, but 1977, Pel ended his career playing a friendly match between the only two club teams in his life. Santos, the Brazilian company that had launched it (between 1956 and 1974) and the American team of the Cosmos (between 1975 and 1977). The game was played at a sold-out Giants Stadium in New York City and was televised in 38 countries. For the occasion, O Rei played once with the local shirt and once with that of Santos. For the first time in their articulated (and rich) sporting history, Americans bowed before a football man, in a tribute that would mark an era. Perhaps the first major football event attended in America with the numbers, excitement and excitement of a top-level baseball or football game. Then in the rain that 37-year-old from Rio who had drunk a great Sweden in 1958, stunned a rocky Italy in 1970 and won everything winnable, came out of football to enter the legend of this sport. Where it still remains, a timeless parameter, to which to approach (sometimes inappropriately) other aspiring footballers stronger in history …