Pele’s awakening and funeral made it clear that his life story had a local side, as well as a national and global one. It’s easy for people to think of Pele as the man who did the most to build the World Cup up, and to make Brazil the first country to win the tournament three times, but the last few days have also made it clear how much he meant by that. Santos City.
His coffin was draped in the Santos flag as well as that of Brazil, and as he walked through the streets of the city, a surprising number of mourners wore Santos T-shirts. Before it belonged to anyone else, it belonged to Santos.
Pele wasn’t born in the city, but after arriving there to sign with the club at the age of 15, it became his base. By Brazilian standards, it’s a small town. With a population of less than half a million, it is dwarfed by the neighboring city of São Paulo. But it has its own identity. It has a tropical feel, like a miniature version of Rio de Janeiro, and as a port, it has a cosmopolitan touch.
Pele arrived as a country boy. He had never seen the sea before and rushed into it to confirm that the water was indeed salty. Santos helped civilize Pelé; It was a good camp, halfway house. After capturing the city of Santos he was ready to conquer the world with Santos Club.
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Surprisingly, the city’s small team could claim to be the best team in the world during Pele’s years. In the 1962 Intercontinental Cup (South America’s Copa Libertadores versus European Cup winners), they thrashed Benfica 8-4 over two legs, Pelé scoring five goals himself. And even with Pele injured, they beat Milan 1-0 in a play-off (after a 6-6 aggregate draw) the following year.
Pele and his supporting team made history, and it’s no wonder he and the city are so closely linked. But was it a forced marriage? The striker attracted a lot of interest from major European clubs, but he was declared a national treasure, and therefore he was not allowed to move abroad. Is it a shame? Does it hurt his legacy that he never played club football in Europe?
At this point, we must be wary of looking at yesterday’s events from today’s perspective. We are used to the supremacy of European football, to the idea that the continent is capable of attracting and monopolizing the best players from around the world. But it wasn’t always this way.
Throughout Pele’s career, the current gap between football clubs in Europe and South America did not exist. The South American game was at least as strong – as Pele himself proved when he ran riot against Benfica in 1962 – and there was no financial gulf between the two continents, a recent development as a result of global television revenues.
Pele wasn’t losing technically or financially by staying with Santos, and in an important way he was winning.
At the time, Brazil did not select players who made their living abroad. And this doesn’t just apply to Europe either. Brilliant centre-back Orlando, a key player in the 1958 triumph, missed the 1962 World Cup because he was busy achieving legendary status with Argentina’s Boca Juniors. It was only in the 1980s, when the global market opened up, that Brazil timidly began to include players from Europe. So spending 18 years at Santos allowed Pele to achieve legendary status in the World Cup.
But there is one feeling that may be unfortunate that Pele did not cross the Atlantic. After winning the Copa Libertadores in 1962 and 1963, Santos were defeated in the semifinals of the competition in the next two years. And then they refused to participate in the Libertadores for quite logical reasons.
In the days before football became a made-for-television event, revenue came from the box office, from people buying tickets to go to the stadium. South America is vast, with unstable and expensive transport links, and it was simply not possible to make enough money on ticket sales to offset travel costs and turn a profit. As a small city club with a small stadium capacity, Santos had to find a way to push Pelé and his extremely talented teammates. If they were going to travel, it would be to play a number of matches rather than just one in the Libertadores, so the club set up its own calendar of friendlies, touring all over the world.
There were benefits from this, especially in Africa where Santos toured in 1967 and again in 1969. They went to the Far East, the Middle East, North America and the Caribbean, as well as Europe and South America. Much of this important missionary work was for the game. In many of these places, the public had never seen anything that could compare.
It is a pity, however, that by conceding the Libertadores, Santos left the field open to Argentine teams at a time when that country was experiencing a moment when relentless and brutal football took center stage – which soon proved enough to scare off Europeans. From the Intercontinental Cup, the competition got off to such a promising start.
The 1962 Intercontinental Cup competition between Benfica and Santos was truly spectacular, a worthy occasion for what Pele considered the best performance of his career. Imagine if, six years later, he faced a Manchester United team featuring George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Le Pelé and company in matches played both home and away? These were events that will remain in the sport’s memory. In fact, the entire history of club football might have taken a different path.
With Pele’s amazing story, we must of course be more than thankful for what we received. But it’s hard to resist the idea that if Santos finds a way to stay in the Copa Libertadores, we can look back with a smile.
