Alien

Pele came from another world, where living beings have a different relationship with the law of gravity and the commandments of Moses. The great Brazilian turned 70 the other day

Pele appeared on the world football horizon in the summer of 1958, at the World Cup in Sweden, where he arrived as a simple seventeen-year-old boy with short hair in a cheap hairdresser on a side street of Rio. The moment of his arrival...

Pele appeared on the world football horizon in the summer of 1958, at the World Cup in Sweden, where he arrived as a simple seventeen-year-old boy with short hair in a cheap hairdresser on a side street of Rio. The moment of his appearance to the amazed people can be determined to the minute: it happened in the match against Wales, when the Brazilian nugget received the ball, standing with his back to the goal and with a defender behind him, turned around without putting the ball on the ground, and scored a goal. For all this, he spent ten times less time than you did to read this phrase.

Already here, in this episode, Pele was given to us in full measure, in its entirety. The defender of the Wales national team held him, as the defenders of other national teams held him later, but at the moment when Pele made four actions with one touch - accepted, turned around, beat and scored - all the hardness, tenacity and viscosity of the defense turned into nothing. He not only scored a goal, he showed us the illusory nature of defense as such. It was Pele's mission and his great gift: to demonstrate the illusory nature of solid things, solid structures, physical phenomena and what is considered to be our only reality.

What this smiling, likeable, gentle man was doing on the pitch was, of course, more than just football. People don't play football like that, people run around the field, puffing and swearing, pushing, fighting, yelling with twisted faces and swollen neck veins. No one has ever seen Pele in a state of rage or aggression, there was absolutely no brutality and cruelty in him, he did not want to kill anyone, trample, ram, twist into a ram's horn and eat him alive. All these ordinary human desires were alien to him to such a strong extent, as if he were not a person at all, but an alien from another world, where living beings have a different relationship with the law of gravity and the commandments of Moses. And he twice a week and for twenty years in a row, entering the football fields of almost all countries and continents, softly and persistently explained to us that a miracle is possible.

Evidence of a miracle, he brought a lot in his life. For example, in one game - I don't remember now what team he played against then, and what's the difference? - he picked up the ball from his penalty area and beat all ten opponents. It doesn't happen in professional football, but he did it. In another game, he kicked the ball from a bunch of defenders so that it described a sharp arc and smoothly sank into the goal behind the goalkeeper. The ball actually doesn’t fly like that, but Pele did. In yet another game—and there were many such games—he entered the protective wall of the hardest muscles, the roughest bones, and the most intense will, with an ease that ordinary people can only dream of. But Pele performed this miracle in reality, and then repeated it many times in front of millions.

... What he did shocked not only the audience, but also those who played against him. In a match against the USSR national team in 1965, he took the ball on his chest, transferred it to his leg and hit - everything, as always, in an instant, in one continuous movement and with such magical ease, as if doing this trick was not difficult for him. But at that moment one defender was advancing on him, another was pushing him in the shoulder, and the third was breathing hotly from behind. It was so beautifully done that Valery Voronin, unable to restrain his admiration, told him: “Very good!” Pele looked at him carefully, as if checking for ridicule in the opponent’s praise, and politely replied: “Thank you!”

Meanwhile the bulldogs and the bone-breakers plotted against him. It was at the 1966 World Cup, where one of the main activities of the football extras was beating up a genius. Pele was beaten hard, from the heart, on the right leg and on the left, on the knees and on the calves, with elbows in the stomach, with elbows in the face. Thus indignant mediocrity took revenge on him for his gift. At that World Cup, Pele very quickly turned into one big bruise, and the symbol of that championship was the little Englishman Norbert Stiles in a T-shirt released from underpants, who was let out on the field as if hunting. I think the British coach Alf Ramsey in the locker room before the match unfastened his leash and said: “And now - face!” And Stiles ran out onto the field and couldn't see anything but the leg he was supposed to grab onto. True, he did not have a chance to hunt on Pele, but he had plenty of hunting for Eusebio. Pele, with injured legs, fluttered on the edge of the field and did nothing.

But he returned at the World Cup in 1970, and there even the most hardened football criminals could not cope with him. There it was already necessary to beat not one Pele, but all Brazilians in a row, all that outstanding team in which Tostao, Jairzinho, Rivelino, Gerson, Carlos Alberto played. They also had a goalkeeper there, but I don't remember his last name. Of course, it can be easily found in a football reference book, but the fact is that I don’t remember his appearance either, although I watched all the matches and I don’t suffer from memory lapses. The fact is that the goalkeeper of that team was not needed, this team could play without a goalkeeper. Pele was now frolicking on the football pitch in the company of people who, in only one match, against the then world champions of the English, scored one goal; in all the rest it was three and four goals that were scored from the right and left, from the center of the penalty area and from its line, legs and head, a direct shot into the top corner or twisted into the bottom one. In the match against the Czechoslovak national team, Pele even decided to score from the center circle and put the ball into the goal along a long and high trajectory. The ball flew, and racing with it at full speed, like a naughty boy, one of the best goalkeepers in the world, Viktor, ran back into his frame. Pele missed by ten centimeters.

Which is amazing. In fact, Pele did not miss. It can be argued that this does not happen, that everyone misses, but I remain of my opinion: this short, smiling Brazilian on springy legs never missed. He was given an amazing eye that allowed him to easily draw the most amazing and elegant lines with the ball. But its special properties were not limited to the eye. He had a different, not like everyone else, nervous system, which was obvious to anyone who watched his game for at least half an hour. For others, thought was translated into movement, and for Pele, thought was movement. That is, some first thought and then did, but for Pele to think meant to do. That is why even the best and fastest players seemed slowed down and not very dexterous against his background and next to him.

In his game, the gravity and limitations of the flesh were absolutely not felt. After receiving the ball, he accelerated effortlessly, as if a secret power source was turned on inside him. Running with the ball at his feet into the densest layers of defense, he did things that could not be predicted. Where, according to all the laws of dynamics, the movement should have dried up, for some reason it began anew for him. Where, after two feints directed in different directions, there should have been a pause in movement, he suddenly had a third feint without any pause and a sharp throw of the ball into the zone, which for some reason turned out to be open. Nobody saw it but him.

I gave him credit for many years, but did not like him. I lacked in him to overcome. He did everything so easily and so naturally that doubt about the values ​​of human existence voluntarily or involuntarily crept into my soul. And in their own completeness, too. I appreciated the will, pressure, passion, and he just played ball without malice. I appreciated the fighters who know how to snatch a victory, but he never stooped to a fight, with all his behavior putting the fight below the game. I respected patience and overcoming, but he never overcame anything, he did not need it. He simply flew on the green lawn for his own pleasure, leaving all these lumps of pumped-up strong-willed flesh and all these countless bulldogs with bloody fire in their eyes in the cold. And only gradually all the greatness of the man in the yellow jersey with the number 10 became clear to me. It was we who all played our beloved, native, intelligible, clay and wooden football, and he taught us, fools, a game that has yet to appear.