In the final, including one where he flicks it over his head, over a defender and volleys it into the back of the net. so he followed that up with success in 62 and then again in 70, the only player to win three world cups. so i think it s very easy to explain why he s a legend. he s unquestionably one of the greatest football players that s ever lived. and you have to be a certain age, of course. and i m one of those people that were lucky enough to see him. my first world cup, i remember, was 1970, that brilliant brazilian side that he was the star of. and he had a profound effect on my love of football. now, we don t really have the access to see the amount of footage that we do in the modern game. even with maradona, we saw quite a lot more than you would do with pele, because obviously not so many matches were filmed. so we didn t see quite so much. and i caught him at the end of his career, but he was still outstanding. but he could do everything. he was.
A remarkable moment for me. and he would often do this. he would remember people s names. he would put his arm around people when they were taking photos with them, which is also a real amazing thing to have the greatest footballer of all time with this legendary guy actually touching you and showing this intimacy with you, that that was the kind of a guy that he was. he was very down to earth. how do you think he remained so when he had the world at his feet? i mean, that s a great question. i mean, i m not100% sure. i mean, he was always he came from a very humble background. his mother and father were very were quite poor. he, pele, grew up quite poor. and they always drummed into him, you know, that he had to set an example to people.
World cup three times. pele has helped them win the world cup three times, and especially after mexico 70. mexico 70 is the first world cup, which is broadcast live to to much of the planet. that habit that we have of downing tools for a month every four years and watching the world cup. now, we ve just been doing this with the action in qatar. all of that starts really with pele. it s pele who transforms this event into the most gripping sports event that there is. does more than anyone else to turn the world cup into the spectacle that it is today. and i think it s there s something fitting, there s something appropriate about the fact that his last lucid days on earth coincided with the world cup in qatar. perhaps pele s crowning glory was his third world cup win in 1970 the first time the tournament was broadcast live around the world. andrew downie is an author who has written about that
World cup and i asked him what that third victory meant for pele. it s his third world cup, third world cup winners medal. he won as a 17 year old in 1958 and then again in 1962. but that world cup, which was the first to be broadcast live around the world and in colour, that really put him on the map. it really cemented his place as the greatest player of all time. and you can claim to have met him. i have met a couple of times and it s funny because for somebody who was so well known, who was such a legendary figure, he was the most humble guy. and i have met two occasions to be real closely, and i remember the first time he actually said my name. i was interviewing him and he said my name and i remember my heart stopping for a second. then i m thinking, hell, he knows my name. and it was really
Joe wilson reports on the life of a true sporting great. the greatest, it s opinion, but pele led, others stand on his shoulders. well over 1,000 goals, a career of over 20 years, three times a world cup winner. brazilian football, synonymous with flair and success, was built on pele. in 1958, pele took part in his first world cup tournament, aged just 17. he scored six goals in four matches, playing himself to the point of exhaustion. when brazil beat sweden in the final, one opponent said when he watched pele, he felt like applauding. injury limited his role in the 1962 world cup. in 1966, well, opposing teams knew they had to stop pele one way or another. four years later, in 1970 in mexico, pele was part of a brazilian team widely regarded as the best set of players ever. they won the world cup