On October 23, 1940, Edson Arantes do Nascimento was born in Tres Coracoes in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil, and he became known to the world as Pele. He grew up in Bauru in the state of Sao Paulo, where his father played football, and he played in bare feet and with a ball made of rags. He was taken on by the Santos club as a teenager in 1956. He was very young.
He was in the Brazil team that won the World Cup in Sweden in 1958, at the age of 17, and he scored twice in the final against the hosts and became known at once. He was injured early in the 1962 tournament, which Brazil won again, and he was at the centre of the team that won the World Cup in Mexico in 1970, which is often described as the best side Brazil has had. The record stands. He is the only player to have won the tournament three times.
His club career was almost all with Santos, where he played from 1956 to 1974 and scored a large share of his goals, and he then spent two seasons with the New York Cosmos, which helped to raise the profile of football in the United States. He said that he had scored 1,283 goals in all matches, a figure that includes friendly games, and the count of official goals is lower. The goals were many. He was known for his control, his speed and his shooting.
He was made a national hero in Brazil, and his name was used by the government in the 1960s to avoid a political dispute over the country's football administration. After retiring he worked as a sports minister, a businessman and an ambassador for the game, and he was given awards by FIFA and by many countries. He died in 2022 at the age of 82, and Brazil held days of mourning.