Pele

Pele

Why we hate him: Because Maradona was better and because he’s the greatest media whore in football.

What a horrendous state of affairs that Pele has landed himself in our Hate section. The man is considered by many to be the greatest footballer of all time. He certainly considers himself to be anyway. Though, then again, maybe it’s that fact which is our real problem with Edson Arantes do Nascimento. He centres much of his life on proving that he was better than Maradona. Maradona spends most of his time eating pizza, snorting coke, sleeping with thousands of women and smoking cigars.

What is horribly overlooked by the Pele apologists is that he played in an age with little TV coverage of games, and that was just in Europe, never mind footage from South America. Okay, he lit up a World Cup at 18, displaying skills that had never been seen before in someone so young. Okay, he was part of the Greatest Side Who Ever Played TM – Brazil 1970. But I dunno, I was born in 1980 so I never saw him play and I haven’t seen many pieces of film that make me think he was any better than Diego Armando Maradona. In fact, I haven’t seen many pieces of footage that make me think he’s any better than John Barnes circa 1987.

Pele has a real bitterness in defending his image as the greatest ever though; perhaps because he doesn’t drink and has messed up a few marriages it’s a sign he doesn’t really interact well with others and simply takes solace in how great he is.

Don’t believe me? This chancer voted for himself in a FIFA poll for player of the last century; he repeated the act in another poll for greatest sportsman of the century; waffling on that “in my mind, I am the best”, or something to that effect. He happily accepted that FIFA Player of the Century award despite the fact that he had robbed Maradona of the prize.

The poll had originally been intended to be the result of an online survey but when it became clear that Maradona was going to win the vote (his figure stood at 53.6 per cent of the total), FIFA hired a ‘Family of Football’ committee to decide the winner and their show pony Pele was wheeled out to take his prize.

Never mind that Pele’s goal-scoring record is a complete sham.

Never mind that he never played outside of Brazil during his peak.

Never mind that he spends his life as a traveling yes-man.

It’s Pele; it’s the easy answer, so there you go.

Don’t believe me on his goals? Well his 1,281in 1,370 games include goals scored for such luminaries as the Brazilian Army and against the assorted chumps of the American Soccer League of the late 1970s. He counts goals in club friendlies for the love of Christ. In fact, he counts goals wherever he can and gets away with it as FIFA wanted to further the legend; indeed perhaps it was actually his stint in the US that bizarrely cemented his legacy as the best of all time.

FIFA and the American league authorities let everyone know the ‘greatest player ever’ was coming and forgot about those pesky facts of life like a dodgy goal tally. Instead, they hyped him up like no one ever had been before in the game. A promotional push worthy of Brand Beckham.

Romario is currently trying to have his 1,000th goal ratified as official by FIFA. It’s that figure “by his own estimation”. Then again I’m not the biggest fan of that little barrel-chested striker either, so we’ll leave his defence and get back to hating Pele. Well maybe after this Romario quote… "When Pele's quiet, he's a poet. On the field, he was the greatest player in history. He was our king. But he should put a shoe in his mouth. He just talks shit." Quality.

In the interests of fairness though, here’s the retort from Pele, which is nearly enough to forgive him for his faults but not quite. Asked about the above Romario quote he said quite brilliantly: “He's small and highly strung, but I've got nothing against him.”

Anyway, on to Pele’s famous predictions. Ah yes, a favourite subject of ours at Okeydokefootball, Pele’s predictions always cause hilarity, not only due to their idiocy but also to the geography involved. He’s in Africa and he says one of their nations will win the World Cup within 20 years. They didn’t. He arrives in Colombia before USA ’94 and tells them they’ll go all the way. Several thousand bets on them and three defeats later and he looked a bit of a tit.

What about telling assorted Chinese press that they would qualify with Brazil from their 2002 World Cup group. Yup, you guessed it. No qualification. No points. Not even a goal.

That of course was the World Cup that he named Nicky Butt as his player of the tournament three games in (in front of the English press oddly). He has since blamed this sentence on his poor English. We blame it on him being a whore for publicity.

But how can we hate the man who gave so much to football you might ask? Well, to be honest, the lengthiest amount of footage I’ve ever seen of him is probably his ball-juggling cameo in Escape to Victory. Otherwise it’s snippets of him missing some decent efforts in Mexico 1970; scoring a few decent frees and laying off a few nice passes to the infinitely cooler (afrotastic) Jarzinho.

Sue me but frankly I’m not gonna track down videos of him. I’ve had it chucked down my throat that this guy was the best ever since I kicked a football in anger (I never quite managed to kick it with any accuracy). With Pele these are my lingering memories…

(1) Watching the first 20 minutes of Hotshot; a ‘sawker’ film where some American chump tracks down Pele in the Brazilian jungle and asks the legend to train him Karate Kid style to “win the big game”. I can’t begin to tell you how bad it was. Pele was the best actor in it, put it that way.

(2) Viagra adverts. No one wants to be remembered for that.

(3) A fawning interview with him by Ally McCoist. Two pricks, one microphone, no fun. That’s just one from thousands of awful interviews I could have picked by the way.

(4) Nicky f**king Butt!!!

Really, throughout his life he’s had enough accolades so now it’s time he joined Fat Frank on a Hate List to take him down a peg or two. He’s probably a lovely fella deep down, but we at Okeydokefootball pride ourselves on superficiality.

Then again, even those in Brazil have often seen through him. Many believe the star of the World Cup in Chile 62 – Garrincha – was in fact a better player, and say that Edson was massively overrated.

We could perhaps best sum up our feelings towards Pele with the following conversation Big Phil Scolari had with a journalist some years back. It came just after the great predictor himself had said Brazil had no chance under Scolari at the 2002 World Cup. A tournament Brazil promptly won of course.

Scolari: "If you want to win games, listen to what Pele has to say and then do the exact opposite."

Reporter: Eh…

Scolari: "Pele and Edson are two different people you know..."

Reporter: "Which do you prefer?"

Scolari: "Neither."

Pele, I’m afraid that Okeydokefootball and Big Phil just plain well don’t like ya.

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JJ Worrall