We pick out six of the Brazilian’s most unforgettable matches, from a quick impact against the USSR to a farewell free-kick
The young Pelé knew how to make a first impression. He scored four goals on his unofficial debut for Santos. He scored one on his official club debut, his goal-tending victim, very much looking at his fate through the prism of a glass half full, later making a business card announcing his status as the keeper who conceded Pelé’s first. He scored within minutes of coming on for his first Brazil cap. But the true harbinger came in Brazil’s third group game of the 1958 World Cup. Thought too callow by some of Brazil’s coaching staff, Pelé and Garrincha sat on the sidelines as they watched the team beat Austria and draw 0-0 with England, the latter the first time the Seleção had failed to score in a World Cup game. That relative failure was enough to force the coach Vicente Feola’s hand. He threw in the inexperienced duo, and after 40 seconds Garrincha hit the post. One minute later, so did Pelé. The woodwork wasn’t the only thing rattled: the USSR team, one of the pre-tournament favourites, were so discombobulated they shipped a goal to Vavá another 60 seconds later. “The greatest three minutes of football ever played,” said the L’Équipe journalist and European Cup founder Gabriel Hanot. The most epochal, too, given what Pelé and Brazil would get up to during the next dozen years.
