Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the soccer ambassador to the world known as Pele died Thursday at the age of 82.
The Brazilian star had been battling colon cancer since 2021, and it was announced during the World Cup earlier this month that he had entered "end of life care."
One of the first true global football stars, he brought the game to the mainstream to places where it hadn't already arrived — like the United States — in the 1960s and '70s. He first starred for the Brazilian national team at the World Cup in 1958 as a 17-year-old. It is no surprise that his home country would win three out of four World Cups in 1958-62 and 1970. Those first two are last time a country has defended the world title.
Over the years he captured the world's soccer attention with his flair, athleticism and ability to dictate a match with his goal-scoring capability. The Guinness Book of World Records credits Pele with 1,279 goals in 1,363 games, which includes international friendlies. Pele played 114 matches with the Brazilian national team and scored a national-record 95 goals.
After 18 years starring for Brazilian league team Santos, he came to the United States when the North American Soccer League was getting a foothold in this country and signed with the New York Cosmos in 1975. Despite being 34 years old and removed from his prime, Pele's credited with elevating soccer's interest and public awareness in a country fixated at the time on baseball, football and basketball. He scored 64 goals in three seasons, and led the Cosmos to the 1977 NASL title. His final game was an exhibition at the end of 1977 between the Cosmos and Santos, and in front of a sellout crowd at The Meadowlands, he played half the game with each club. The Cosmos won, 2-1, with Pele scoring a second-half goal for them, and during the second half,it started to rain, prompting a Brazilian newspaper write the next-day headline, "Even the sky was crying."
After his playing career he became a politician and Brazil's Minister of Sport, and later a United Nations ambassador.
Per ESPN, his well-known name Pele came from him mispronouncing the name of a player called Bile.
