Pele truly did give us the beautiful game!

PELE famously described football as 'o jogo bonito' - the beautiful game and arguably no individual did more to make it so.

- JAMS CANN

The Brazil great was always willing to attempt the extraordinary and in doing so he redefined what was possible on the pitch.

Three moments from the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico - widely regarded as Pele's pinnacle - all ended with him being thwarted.

There was the incredible save from England's Gordon Banks to keep out his bullet header, the audacious but missed attempt to beat the Czech goalkeeper from the halfway line in Brazil's opening match and the outrageous dummy which bamboozled Uruguay's keeper in the semi-final but ultimately did not result in a goal as Pele pulled the resulting shot wide.

But they only enhanced the overall impression of him as one of football's pioneers, a man who won three World Cup and scored more than a thousand career goals.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, to give him his full name, hailed from the state of Minas Gerais.

He felt his footballing talent was a gift from God and also claimed he had been under special protection when it appeared he would drown while swimming in a river after bunking off school as a child, only to

He fought for survival then, and even fought against the name which would later resonate around the world, which is said to have evolved from his love of his goalkeeping hero Bile.

"I fought in college with the kids because I said, 'No, my name's Edson, but they called me Pele," he said in 2009. "I got two days suspended because everybody in the school called me Pele.