By By Elsie Udoh
As the world marks the exit of Brazil’s Football Icon, Pelé the Great, there is no denying that the legend will be greatly remembered for his extraordinary feats in the football industry.
Pelé had a successful 21 years of play and was considered by many the Greatest Footballer of All Time (G.O.A.T).
The legend who passed away at age 82 on Thursday, December 29, 2022, left an engraving in the minds of many who witnessed his glory years.
Here are 10 interesting facts to know about the late football legend, Pelé.
1. Pelé was named Edson Arantes do Nascimento after Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb and lived up to his name by lighting up many football pitches with his skills.
2. He started his career in 1956 at age 15 when a local coach, Waldemar de Brito took him to play for the football club Santos and declared that he would be the best in the world within minutes and signed him immediately.
3. Pelé frowned at his nickname initially after his classmates teased him for mispronouncing the name of the Brazilian goalkeeper, Bilé as Pelé.
4. Pelé walked in the same path as his father, João Ramos do Nascimento, nicknamed Dondinho who was also a footballer and served as Pelé’s mentor.
5. In his lifetime, Pelé hit a landmark of 1000 goals and was the top scorer of the Brazil national football team with 77 goals in 92 official international matches for Brazil and 680 goals in official club matches.
6. To date, Pelé remains the youngest player to score in a World Cup. He achieved this at only the age of 17 and scored a total of three goals in different World Cups making him the only player out of 471 players who have been in the winning team in the World Cup to win the World Cup three times.
7. During the 1959 South American Championship, Pelé was named player of the tournament and champion of the world for scoring eight goals.
8. In 1999, he was voted athlete of the century by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
9. Apart from being a football legend, Pelé served as Brazil’s Extraordinary Minister of Sport between 1995 and 1998 and also as a United Nations ambassador for Ecology and the Environment.
10. Pelé ended his football career in 1977 but the Legend remained a worldwide ambassador for football and was named the honorary president of the New York Cosmos in 2010.
