Pele died

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As I write this text, Pele is still alive. If you are reading it, Pele is already dead, and this gives you the opportunity to see his story in flashback, completed, from end to beginning. When I am with you in the future, I will try to explain a few things about his life - before and after death.

Pelé was not the first global football superstar - football players no less influential played and were popular before him: the Argentinean Di Stefano, the Hungarian Puskas. Nor was Pelé the first truly significant player in Brazil: the influence of players like Leonidas (in the 1930s) or Garrincha (in the 1950s) was very great. But unlike them, Pele was a figure who, during his playing career, made the transition from the status of just a “great player” to a symbol - to the personification of football as a game.

This may have several explanations. Indeed, Pele was the only player to win three world titles: in 1958, 1962 and 1970. But if we look closely, we will see that in 1958 he only entered the field once in the group stage (but played strongly in the later stages), in 1962 he was seriously injured and did not play in the playoffs at all. Yes, 1970 was his tournament, but not only his: around him was the best football team in the history of Brazil.

Pele has scored a thousand goals - but there are players in the world who have scored more. And if Ronaldo leaves to play in the Emirates, then perhaps he will score 1001 goals, who knows.

There are so many important things for a culture hero that Pele never did. He was not a political figure, the voice of his generation. On the contrary, during the years of tough dictatorship in Brazil, Pele always personified "normality", the establishment, the status quo. His image was endlessly used in commercials, where he played the role of a prosperous and law-abiding Brazilian. His passion for money at some point turned him into an object of ridicule - we also found his cheap "Pele coffee" in large cans at the Luzhniki market. He was not Maradona, the embodiment of the secret desires of men to break free from conventions and become free. He was not Socrates - the leader of the Brazilian national team of the 1980s, the father of " Corinthian democracy ".

But Pele really was a black boy from a very simple family. Many of his biographers, especially towards the end of his life, noticed behind him a fear familiar to many - to remain in retirement without money, not in demand. Pele was in many ways closer to any of his fans than the "conscious" star players around him.

During his playing career, Pele went through the mirror of the media and came out on the other side of it as a perfect, perfect football player. When he first started, in 1958, at the age of 17, the main football media in Brazil and the world was still radio. Pele managed to become the hero of myths and legends: the vast majority of Brazilians did not see his game on the field in the first years of his career, they only heard about him, read reports in newspapers. But by the end of his career, in the early 1970s, he was already a TV star - a visual, tangible cultural image.

While still playing for his Brazilian club Santos, Pele traveled all over the world with exhibition matches, and finally swept the globe, moving to finish playing in New York - in a local team with the only suitable name for him was Cosmos.

Who Pele was for the world is clearly seen in the example of the Soviet Union. If you read the football biographies of Soviet players of his generation (Ivanov, Netto, Yashin), everyone has a meeting with him in a separate chapter, in a separate story. Goalkeepers were happy to repel his shot - but became famous and conceded a goal from him. The defenders dreamed of holding him back, but they got into world history when he beat them. The fact that Lev Yashin called Pele a "friend" automatically included the Soviet goalkeeper in the world football elite.

To me, with a football library inherited from my grandfather, a KGBist, the stories about Pele came to me in the presentation of the main Soviet football international journalist - Igor Fesunenko. His books "The Bowl of Maracana" and "Pele, Garrincha, Football ..." for entire generations of fans in the USSR replaced radio and newspapers, Jobim and Niemeyer. In his best descriptions, Fesunenko achieved the quality of a ballet critic - he interpreted Pele's game as a dance, the same, in turn, came up with special, previously unknown moves and tricks on the field - so he scored his thousandth goal from a penalty "paradina" - with a pause and a change directions in the direction of the ball (now this is sometimes scored in the FNL, but what's the difference).

The strange thing about any footballer's career is that if he lives long enough, he loses almost all witnesses to the life of his talent. By the end of his life, Pele turned into his own monument - but unlike many other monuments in our time, he was able to survive his own revision, even decolonization of his image, while maintaining the status of the greatest, perfect player.

In part, football itself helped him in this - still a very conservative, traditionalist game with an established pantheon, values ​​and virtues. Maradona will always be a romantic hero - a genius, outcast, unusual and in unusual circumstances. Messi is a post-time football hero, endlessly calculated in figures and facts. None of them will move Pele from the pedestal of an exemplary, classic hero. Within the boundaries of the rectangle of the football field, Pele has achieved everything.