Pelé was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento on October 23, 1940, in the small town of Três Corações, Brazil. His family was very poor, and young Edson could not afford a real soccer ball. Instead, he practiced by kicking a grapefruit or a sock stuffed with newspaper through the streets. His father, who was also a soccer player, taught him the basics of the game and encouraged his love of the sport.
Pelé joined the professional soccer club Santos FC when he was just 15 years old, and he quickly became the team’s star player. In 1958, at age 17, he traveled to Sweden with Brazil’s national team for the FIFA World Cup and amazed the world by scoring six goals in the tournament. Brazil won the championship that year, making Pelé the youngest player ever to win a World Cup. His speed, creativity, and ball control made him unlike any player the world had seen before.
Pelé helped Brazil win three FIFA World Cups in total, earning titles in 1958, 1962, and 1970. During the 1962 tournament in Chile, he was injured early on and missed most of the games, but Brazil still won the championship. The 1970 World Cup in Mexico is often considered the greatest tournament ever played, and Pelé led a Brazilian team that many call the best in soccer history. No other player has ever won three World Cup titles.
Over his career, Pelé scored a stunning 1,279 goals in 1,363 official and unofficial matches, a number that has never been matched. On November 19, 1969, he scored his 1,000th goal on a penalty kick at the famous Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, and the game was stopped so fans could celebrate. The International Olympic Committee named him the “Athlete of the Century” in 1999. He is widely considered the greatest soccer player of all time and helped turn soccer into the most popular sport on Earth.
After retiring from Brazilian soccer, Pelé played for the New York Cosmos from 1975 to 1977, helping to grow the sport in the United States. He spent much of his later life working as a global ambassador for soccer and for children’s causes around the world. Pelé received countless honors, including Brazil’s Gold Medal of Merit and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He passed away on December 29, 2022, at the age of 82, and people around the world mourned the loss of the man they simply called “The King of Football.”
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