Pelé - God's Own Player

If football is the beautiful game, then Pelé was the beautiful player. Arguably the best ever, the Brazilian artist was much more than what he did on the field. After his death at age 82, THE WEEK looks at the legacy he leaves behind

- Milan Sime Martinic

"Now, he belongs to the ages.” The sentence, uttered first in reference to Abraham Lincoln’s death, now describes Pelé. Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pelé to the world, was the greatest footballer of all time. He was the distilled spirit of Brazil and the sum of its football greatness.

The thinker Arthur Schopenhauer described talent as hitting a target no one else can hit, and genius as hitting a target no one else can see. He may just as well have been describing Pelé.

The striker introduced a new level of skill and technical ability to Brazilian football, using both his feet and his head in manners others had not. Every early description of his career notes this emergence of an innovator. They also note the joy of a child playing with a ball.

Named after the inventor Thomas Edison, Pelé married science with art. He transformed play into a mix of magic and technique, which epitomised and popularised the description of football as jogo bonito—“the beautiful game”.

“A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides—gratitude and purity,” wrote the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who reflected deeply on what makes any individual exceptionally great.