Analysis: Pelé's style on the pitch was simultaneously grounded in teamwork, consistency, charisma and captivation
It is far too easy to measure football success solely in terms of the number of goals scored, games played and medals won. Yet statistics do not allow for the quality, joy, and beauty of the game. Robert F. Kennedy was referring to GNP when he said "measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile". He could have equally been speaking of sport and the growing tendency to appreciate it primarily in terms of numbers.
Even though he has remarkable records (the only player to win three World Cups, for example), Brazilian soccer legend Pelé's appeal and significance transcend the numbers. In an attempt to comprehend the meaning of Brazil's victory in the 1970 World Cup Final, Jornal do Brazil claimed "Brazil’s victory with the ball compares with the conquest of the moon by the Americans."
From ITV, all the highlights of Pelé at the 1970 World Cup
In recent years, football writers from Jonathan Wilson to David Goldbatt and Andreas Campomar have all used this quote to reckon with the impact and legacy of Brazil’s 1970 victory. In fact, the quote’s ubiquity has become something of a cliché.
At first, the hyperbole of the comparison could be dismissed as jingoistic nonsense. Yet, there is some truth in the connection. Just as Apollo 11 won the space race the previous summer, the victory of Brazil's 11 is still regarded as peak football. It is the ultimate standard by which all other achievements dare to measure. It remains otherworldly in a modern way.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTE Radio 1's Ryan Tubridy Show, soccer fan Joe talks about getting his copy of Shoot! magazine signed by none other than Pelé
As such, Pelé’s brilliant dummy against Uruguay and Neil Armstrong's alighting in reverse from the Eagle’s ladder, are the first truly global and televisual memes that we can return to endlessly. There may be better candidates for epic moments, but they did not happen on live television. And what's more, the football, unlike the moon landing, was broadcast in the so-called "glorious Technicolor."
As an icon, Pelé was a trailblazing ambassador not only for Brazil but for "O Jogo Bonito", the beautiful game, a phrase he popularised in the title of his 1977 memoirs. He was a global sporting superstar, traveling from Washington DC to Dalymount in a circus of razzmatazz, gimmicks and glamour. In words attributed to Andy Warhol, "Pelé was one of the few who contradicted my theory: instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries." He went on to be businessman, minister of sport, singer, actor, composer, public-face of Viagra, and serial offender of referring to himself in the third person.
The co-director of the recent Netflix biography on Pelé, Ben Nicholas, surmised his status in the following way; "He's Elvis. He's Neil Armstrong. He’s the prototype; all of these other guys that come after are building on something that he laid the foundations for, because he lived a life that no-one had ever lived up until that point. He was the first global superstar."
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTE Archives, Pelé attracts 30,000 to Dalymount Park in 1972 to see Brazilian Santos FC play a selection from Irish clubs Bohemians and Drumcondra
Yet the immediate appeal of Pelé is his style of play, characterised by close ball control, quick turns and feints. It had a curvaceous carefree flow that excelled at fooling the opposition, and by extension, the crowd. This is a style known as Ginga or body-sway (a term for a fundamental move in capoeira).
This liquid-like football represents an aesthetic that was in keeping with the zeitgeist of Latin American modernity. Its success was understood as a tonic for the Brazilian nation after the coup in the 1960s and a national redemption from the "Maracanazo" defeat of 1950, when Brazil incredibly lost the World Cup on home soil.
This event was commonly understood in terms of the "Mongrel Complex", coined by Brazilian writer Nelson Rodrigues, and exemplified by the racialised scapegoating of the players in the aftermath of the 1950 World Cup loss. Writing in 1958, Rodrigues described the complex as "the inferiority in which Brazilians put themselves, voluntarily, in comparison to the rest of the world. Brazilians are the reverse Narcissus, who spit in their own image. Here is the truth: we can't find personal or historical pretexts for self-esteem."
The success of Ginga also chimed with the so-called "mestizo modernity" in art and architecture described by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, famous for his planning of the new Modernist capital, Brasilia, from 1960 onwards. Likewise, social historian Gilberto Freyre, calling on Nietzsche’s seminal analysis of ancient Greek culture, contrasted the (Dionysian) Brazilian way of playing football as smart, skilful, and emotional, to the formal and disciplined (Apollonian) European style. Freyre differentiated two opposing styles of playing football and, consequently, two different cultural styles, understanding what he called Futebol Arte in Brazil as characterised by a "flamboyant… and shrewd mulattoism."
Like any other sport, football is, of course, a mix of both aspects. Notably, Pelé’s style was simultaneously grounded in teamwork, consistency, charisma, and captivation. Despite the continuing racialised discourse that mars the sport, Pelé’s success in becoming the aesthetic measure of the game can be seen as a victory over "football as eugenics", claiming beauty for the 'mongrel'. After all, Brazil winning the World Cup with Pelé is not much of a miracle; it was their style of play that constituted the modern miracle, comparable only to humanity’s exploration and conquest of space.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
