Tribute to Pele

Pele 

(Edson Arantes do Nascimento 

23 October 1940 – 29 December 2022)

 

I never saw him play live, in person or on TV, but for a long time after I was introduced to football he was the standard by which all footballers were measured. I’m writing, of course, of The King – Pele. I’m not going to go through his history in this blog post. Pele’s life story is well documented and easily accessible.  I’m merely going to express what he meant to me, as he did to the majority of football-loving fans, young and old, around the world. 

 

When I first heard about Pele, he was already playing for the New York Cosmos, the star-studded marquee team of the former NASL (North American Soccer League). I did get to watch the Cosmos play live on a vacation to the United States in 1982. My brother and I went while my sister and parents went to see a Broadway or Off-Broadway play. I think they went to see The Fantasticks.Around the same time, the movie Escape to Victory (released in some outlets as Victory) came out. It stars Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and a bunch of footballers (Ossie Ardilles, Russell Osman, John Wark, Sir Bobby Moore, to name a few) playing prisoners of war during World War II. The movie was about their exploits playing a match against the German team and planning their escape with the help of the French resistance. Pele played one of the POWs. I recall his character being from Trinidad. 

 

While the movie is obviously scripted and choreographed, it’s evident that Pele was artistry in motion. Watching news reel footage of his career in various stages, you can see how his levels of brilliance, creativity, grace, and beauty never waned. They just became more amazing as he got older and became the legend that he is. I recently saw a post on Facebook showing clips of Pele doing all the amazing things that today’s stars do. The clip was called something like ‘Pele did it first’ and, while I admire Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, and others for what they’ve done in their careers and what they do on the pitch, for me, Pele will always be the best. The only player to have won the World Cup three times, he set the standard. He was the best. To use today’s parlance, Pele is the goat. To paraphrase Neymar, who tweeted after Pele’s passing, football was just a sport before Pele. Pele turned it into art and entertainment. Due to Pele’s magnificence, the number 10 shirt became something to covet and something to fear. If you were given the number 10 to wear, it meant you were different, special, and big things were expected of you. Pele is to football what Muhammad Ali is to boxing and Bruce Lee to martial arts. In my opinion, as a form of tribute, it would be fitting to acknowledge the impact Pele had on football if for the remainder of the current football season around the world all players wore black armbands and there were a moment of silence before every match. 

 

As I grew into football, as a fan (I support Arsenal and Hamburger SV), player (I played during my school days for Island School (Hong Kong) and in a local grass roots league organised by some of my schoolmates), and coach (Hanover Park HS Boys Junior Varsity, Passaic County Community College Men, Solomon Schechter Day School Boys and Girls Varsity), I learnt of other legendary players (such as Franz Beckenbauer, Eusebio, Johan Cruyff, The Charlton brothers, George Best) who elevated football. Eventually rising stars became the talk of the media, claiming Pele’s mantle as the ‘best ever.’ There were Zico and Diego Maradona, who I was fortunate to see live in Hong Kong when he was still playing for Boca Juniors. Around the same time, there was Michel Platini wowing football fans with his skill and cool demeanour. Then came the likes of George Weah, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho. A little after came Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, both many consider are the best to ever play the beautiful game. Crossing with their careers came Neymar and Mbappe, already a star at twenty-four years of age and sure to lead the next generation. Mbappe is a two-time World Cup finalist (winner in 2018 and runner-up in 2022) and has already surpassed many of Pele’s World Cup exploits.

 

All these players and all players around the world, all fans of every generation owe Pele a giant thank you. He may not have been the reason we got into football but I’m sure he’s a reason – if not THE reason – we love it. He inspired the players who came after him. So, too, were the ones he played with and against. If for nothing else, Pele motivated them to be better.

 

More than football, although some would argue what else is there other than football, Pele brought the world together with his infectious good nature, professing words of peace and love, and brandishing his trademark smile. He was an ambassador. He promoted the game he loved and now we love it too. He promoted humanity and love and peace through that game and you can see, in video clips and interviews, the innocence and unadulterated joy on his face when he talks about these things. It’s the same feelings one gets when watching him play and the elation on his face when he scores. He had the talent on the pitch. He had the humility on and off the pitch. He had the love for all mankind and he made us love him in return. He had longevity, sharing all of this and himself with us for eighty years. In all of these, he will be missed.

 

Thank you, Pele. God bless you and your family. Rest in peace. On behalf of those of us you’ve left behind, I promise that we will do our best to be worthy of being the custodians of your beautiful game.

The Soundtrack of My Life

 

    I was driving home yesterday when I switched radio channels from a regional Top 40 station to the Eighties Sirius XM channel.  The show was going through Billboard Top 100 from 1986 and No Easy Way Out, from the movie Rocky IV, which was released in the autumn of 1985, came on. The song brought all sorts of memories and feelings to the fore - excitement, hope, nostalgia, regret. It was around the time that Rocky IV came out when I took my first Taekwondo belt promotion test. In fact, I watched the movie the night before test day. For me, who would go on and follow a martial artist's path and continue Taekwondo training for decades to follow, the Rocky IV soundtrack and  No Easy Way Out, in particular, took on special meaning simply because of that random and unexpected connection. As quickly as those memories from the autumn of 1985, my first year living in the United States, they left me and Rocky V and the song Measure of a Man and the memories and feelings associated with them took their place. In my head were memories from 1991, when I graduated from Rutgers University, broke up with my college girlfriend, and had the rest of my life ahead of me. 

    It's interesting that two songs from different Rocky movies have such a strong connection to my life and the chronology of my hopes, dreams, successes, and failures. I assure you that there are non-Rocky and non-soundtrack songs that bring back memories of other important times and events of my life. And, don't worry. I'm not (not now, anyway) going to present you with a list of songs that make up my life but, if I did, I wonder what would be in it. An album is, what, twenty songs or so? Maybe it's a few less, sixteen or fourteen. If I do compile a soundtrack of my life, what songs would I include? Would I focus on monumental events in my life, like my wedding, and include my wedding song? Or, would I find a song for every year or decade that sums up what I did or felt or songs that represent my overall mood for each year?

    As I get older - as I've gotten older - and closer to my waning days, I look back more than I did in my thirties or, even, forties. Would coming up with a soundtrack to my life be merely hubris or would it be something worthwhile to leave my son? As a writer, I think it makes for an interesting exercise. Writers create worlds and lives and creating a soundtrack to a life can help form character, motivation, and dramatic need. As a man, husband, and father, I think it's a fun and meaningful endeavour. It can be a musical illustration of a person's evolution.

    No Easy Way Out and Measure of a Man will definitely make the final list of my soundtrack. So, too, I think will one or two Human League songs and several from different Broadway shows. What about yours? What's in the soundtrack of your life?

    Thanks for stopping by.