Pele is playing keepy up with Maradona

[MJWalker45]

ESPN News is reporting that Pele has died after a long fight with cancer. 

https://nypost.com/2022/12/29/soccer-icon-pele-dead-at-82-after-health-battles/

Even knowing this was going to happen soon it's still not something you can fully prepare for. 

 

[Dynasty]

While he was way before my time, I understand the influence he had in the world of soccer and how he made Brazil the greatest soccer country in the world. I think Messi may be the closest thing we have had to that kind of figure and I'm sorry if I'm missing other all-time greats there, because I admittingly don't follow things outside the US. That being said, even I knew who Pele was and that says something. I think a lot of people who don't dwell that far into international sports know or at the very least have an idea on who the guy was.

 

82 is old, but it still feels like it's too soon for somebody.

[Dilbert]

Pele wasnt just the king of soccer. He was a king in the entire sports world. RIP "Rei"

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

Pele's arrival to the New York Cosmos was my awakening to soccer, as it was for a great many people in New York and the U.S.  His presence caused an unprecedented surge of the NASL, which became a legitimate major league in the U.S. and Canada for a brief time.  Alas, shortly thereafter came the league's collapse, due mainly to its overexpansion. The Cosmos' great owner Steve Ross is the very model of what a sports team owner should be. It was Ross who lured Pele to the Cosmos, and who stocked the team with other stars. The public responded with emphatic approval. Unfortunately, the NASL's other owners did not follow suit; and the league exacerbated this problem by being indiscriminate in its expansion, and granting expansion teams to rinky-dink lemonade-stand operators who were nowhere near the level of Ross. The NASL would have been better off with a fraction of the teams, but with each team in the hands of serious owners. After the NASL's collapse American pro soccer entered a dark age, not to emerge until another superstar's arrival more than thirty years after that of Pele, when Beckham turned around a floundering MLS and established that league as a major entity. MLS handled the aftermath of its own "Pele moment" much better than the NASL did, by being appropriately selective about the subsequent ownership groups which it approved.

 

 

With Giorgio Chinaglia in the Cosmos' most famous uniform style.

 

 

 

With Franz Beckenbauer.

 

 

 

In 1976 there was a tournament called the Bicentennial Cup in which the national teams of Brazil, England, and Italy were joined by a U.S. team (referred to as "Team America") that consisted not of American players but of players of all nationalities who were playing for clubs in the U.S. (a concept that I can get behind much more than that of traditional national teams).

 

Here are Pele and England's 1966 World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore in their U.S. uniforms, along with Gerry Francis of the England team.

 

 

 

All hail Pele, the father of big-time pro soccer in the U.S., and a New York sporting legend.

 

[TrueYankee26]

RIP to the original GOAT

 

Who had this game for the Genesis. It was simply titled "Pele!"

 

 

[MJWalker45]

22 hours ago, Dynasty said:

While he was way before my time, I understand the influence he had in the world of soccer and how he made Brazil the greatest soccer country in the world. I think Messi may be the closest thing we have had to that kind of figure and I'm sorry if I'm missing other all-time greats there, because I admittingly don't follow things outside the US. That being said, even I knew who Pele was and that says something. I think a lot of people who don't dwell that far into international sports know or at the very least have an idea on who the guy was.

 

82 is old, but it still feels like it's too soon for somebody.

Maradona feels like that at times, but then I remember he got tossed out of USA94 for cocaine. An advantage Pele had over him was that when he played there were the likes of Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Best, Moore, and Charlton to immediately compare him too. That larger sample helped h stand out in the way Messi and Ronaldo are placed ahead of Neymar, Mbappe, and others. Had Pele played today we'd be able to see his highlights the minute they happened and I think the mystique of less international club competitions helped make what he could do in World Cups stand out so much more.