Sports

Pele The King, The GOAT: Historic Milestone & Legacy Of A Football Legend

Published

3 years ago

December 29, 2022

The greatest player of all time, as widely regarded and three-time World Cup winner, Pele was announced dead by his family on Thursday.

The Brazilian football legend, who masterminded the “beautiful game,” died at the age of 82.

Read also: BREAKING: Brazilian football legend Pele is dead

Here is some of the historic milestone & legacy of the football legend.

Pele is the only footballer in history to win three World Cups — 1958, 1962 and 1970. He was named athlete of the century by the International Olympic Committee in 1999.

pic.twitter.com/LM2Fi1jHQ3— SportsGrid (@SportsGrid) December 29, 2022

Nicknamed “O Rei” (The King), he scored more than 1,000 goals in one of the most storied careers in sport, before retiring in 1977.

He had been in increasingly fragile health, battling kidney problems and colon cancer — undergoing surgery for the latter in September 2021, followed by chemotherapy.

‘Samba football’

Born October 23, 1940, in the southeastern city of Tres Coracoes, Edson Arantes do Nascimento — Pele’s real name — grew up selling peanuts on the street to help his impoverished family get by.

His parents named him for famed American inventor Thomas Edison.

But he was soon given the nickname Pele, for his mispronunciation of Bile, the name of a goalkeeper at Vasco de Sao Lourenco, where his footballer father once played.

Pele dazzled from the age of 15, when he started playing professionally with Santos. He led the club to a flurry of titles, including back-to-back Intercontinental Cups, against Benfica in 1962 and AC Milan in 1963.

Known for his genius with the ball, he epitomized the sublime style of play called “samba football” in Brazil, where he was declared a “national treasure.”

He scored an all-time record 1,281 goals in 1,363 matches for Santos (1956-74), the Brazilian national team, and the New York Cosmos (1975-77).

But beyond his records, he will be remembered for revolutionizing the sport, his ever-present number 10 on his back.

The first global football star, he played a lead role in the game’s transformation into a sporting and commercial powerhouse, tapping his preternatural athleticism despite his relatively small size — 1.70 meters (just under five-foot-seven).

He also played with heart, visible in the iconic black-and-white footage of the 17-year-old phenom bursting into tears after helping Brazil to its first World Cup title, in 1958.

Eight years earlier, seeing his father cry when Brazil lost the 1950 World Cup final at home to Uruguay, he had promised to bring the trophy home one day.

Sports royalty

Pele reached the pinnacle of his greatness at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, the first broadcast in color, where he starred on what many consider the greatest team of all time, with talents such as Rivellino, Tostao and Jairzinho.

He was often welcomed like royalty when traveling abroad with Santos or the national team. Legend has it in 1969 his arrival in Nigeria was the occasion for a 48-hour truce in the bloody Biafra war.

Pele declined offers to play in Europe, but signed for a brief, lucrative swan song with the Cosmos at the end of his career, bringing his star power to the land of “soccer.”

His reign extended beyond the pitch, with gigs as a movie star, singer and later sports minister (1995-1998) — one of the first black cabinet members in Brazil.

But he faced criticism at times in Brazil for remaining quiet on social issues and racism, and for what some saw as his haughty, vain personality.

Unlike Argentine rebel Diego Maradona, his rival for the title of greatest of all time, Pele was seen as close to those in power — including Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime.

Final match

Pele’s public appearances had grown increasingly rare, and he frequently used a walker or wheelchair.

He was hospitalized several times for urinary infections, then again in 2021 and 2022 for the colon cancer that marked the beginning of the end.

But he met his health problems with trademark humor.

“I will face this match with a smile on my face,” he posted on Instagram in September 2021, after surgery to remove his colon tumor.

He was deeply moved when Maradona, his longtime friend and rival, died of a heart attack in 2020 at age 60.

“The world has lost a legend,” he wrote.

“One day, I hope, we will play soccer together in the sky.”

VANGUARD

Sports

Monaco Shock PSG As Minamino Scores Winner

Published

3 hours ago

November 29, 2025

Editor

Japan’s Takumi Minamino scored the only goal of the game as Monaco shocked reigning champions Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1 on Saturday, winning 1-0 in the principality.

The 30-year-old Japanese international star, once of Liverpool, struck just past the midway point in the second half at the Stade Louis II to inflict a second domestic defeat of the campaign on PSG.

Monaco held on through the closing stages, including seven minutes of stoppage time, after having former Paris defender Thilo Kehrer sent off in the 80th minute.

It is a surprise result with Monaco ending a run of three consecutive Ligue 1 losses which had seen them lose ground on PSG and the other sides at the top of the table.

They are now provisionally up to sixth, seven points behind the capital side whose only other reverse in Ligue 1 so far this season came away to Marseille in September.

PSG remain top of the standings for now with 30 points from 14 games, but last season’s Champions League winners are just two points clear of nearest rivals Marseille and Lens and could lose their place at the summit later on Saturday.

“Usually I prefer to watch matches again and analyse them, but today it is easier. We were not precise enough and we made too many individual and collective mistakes,” said PSG coach Luis Enrique.

“Neither team played at a very high level, but they played better than us. It was without any doubt our worst match of the season.”

Sports

UK Unveils Record-breaking Bid For 2035 Women’s World Cup

Published

1 day ago

November 28, 2025

Editor

UK football chiefs on Friday unveiled details of their unopposed joint bid to host the Women’s World Cup in 2035, with 22 proposed stadiums listed in the official submission.

The bid team said the 48-nation finals would be the biggest single-sport event ever staged in the UK.

It would be the first World Cup played on British soil since the men’s finals in 1966, which were solely hosted by England.

“With 63 million people living within two hours of a proposed venue, it would be the most accessible tournament ever,” the bid team said in a statement.

Sixteen of the stadiums on the shortlist are in England, including Manchester United’s proposed new 100,000-seater arena, with three in Wales, two in Scotland, and one in Northern Ireland, across 15 cities.

The final number of stadiums is expected to be whittled down to around 16.

A measure of the size of the event is that at the Qatar men’s World Cup in 2022, just eight stadiums were used.

FIFA confirmed later on Friday that the UK bid would be formally ratified at next year’s congress in Vancouver.

The April gathering of football’s global governing body is also set to approve the joint candidature of the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Jamaica to stage the 2031 women’s World Cup.

“Hosting the FIFA Women’s World Cup would be a huge privilege for our four home nations,” the chief executives of the UK football associations  said on Friday.

“If we are successful, the 2035 tournament will be the biggest single-sport event held on UK soil with 4.5 million tickets available for fans.

“We are proud of the growth that we’ve driven in recent years across the women’s and girls’ game, but there is still so much more growth to come, and this event will play a key role in helping us deliver that.”

Manchester United’s existing Old Trafford stadium has been included, but the bid team intend to put the club’s proposed new ground forward for consideration by FIFA once plans are confirmed.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the bid showed the UK’s passion for football.

“The (England) Lionesses’ success has inspired girls across our country, and we’ll build on that momentum by welcoming millions of football fans from around the world to a tournament that will benefit communities and businesses in host cities up and down the UK,” he said.

England’s women’s team have won the past two European Championships and reached the final of the 2023 World Cup.
From 2031, the Women’s World Cup will be contested between 48 teams, up from 32.

The next Women’s World Cup will take place in Brazil in 2027.

Sports

NFF In Fresh N1.4b FIFA Women World Cup Scandal

Published

1 day ago

November 28, 2025

Editor

Former Super Falcons head coach, Randy Waldrum, has questioned the Nigeria Football Federation’s (NFF) management of the monies that the world football governing body, FIFA, gave the federation for the team’s preparation for the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, reports allnigeriasoccer.com.

Waldrum’s team was eliminated from the championship in the second round by England through a penalty shootout. But the American alleged in a viral video on X that his team was handicapped by the NFF’s failure to make available the fund needed to properly prepare the side for the championship.

He alleged that the NFF received $960,000 from FIFA in October 2022 to support the Super Falcons’ preparations for the tournament.

He said: “I have a real close contact here in the US that is very connected with some of the board at FIFA. This person told me that in October, every country was given $960k from FIFA to prepare for the World, where is that money.

“If Nigeria got that money why didn’t we have a camp in November? We went to Japan, we flew in and played the game and went home. Some of our players didn’t arrive until the morning before the game, I think five players who were going to start for me, arrived the night before the game and the game was 4:00pm and they traveled 16 hours on the plane. And we played Japan and then we went home. We wasted the last five days of that window to train.”

Waldrum, who affirmed that FIFA provides financial support to federations that are unable to afford business-class travel, with deductions made from their World Cup earnings.

According to him, the NFF had no justification for suboptimal logistics. “So, all these questions I have is where is this money? And the other thing I found out through my FIFA connections is that if countries don’t have the money to buy business class tickets for everybody, FIFA will fund the money and buy those tickets and just deduct it from the monies you get from FIFA after the World Cup.

“So there’s no excuse to say we didn’t have money to buy tickets and then we didn’t have camps. These are the kinds of things that the people of Nigeria don’t question. In the US, they would be questioned. If the US Soccer Federation was doing the same things, the US Soccer Federation would have to answer to it.”

The coach also faulted the NFF for failing to maximise FIFA-approved staffing provisions, noting that while FIFA allows up to 22 technical staff members, Nigeria travelled with only about 11.

“So if FIFA will pay bonuses for up to 22 people, why didn’t we have 22 people? I didn’t have an analyst and I scout. Listen, the US has a scout in Europe, watching teams play in these exhibitions, in case they face them at the World Cup,” he explained.

“We didn’t even have scouts going with us to Australia. I didn’t even have anybody to scout games. If we got out of our group, I didn’t even have anybody to scout games in other groups. Everything I had to do was on videos and what I could pick up online.”