28.11.2004
Pele: There will never be another Pele
Little more can be said about Pele than hasn't already been said. One of the game’s great players and ambassadors recently sat down to talk about the state of football in South America, Brazil’s current crop of stars and how he sees the 2006 FIFA World Cup shaping up.
FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter recently said he wanted the
qualifiers in South America to change, because there are too many games.
What is your opinion and what do you think would be the best
system?
I agree 100 percent with Blatter. I was one of the votes
because we are part of the committee from FIFA -- myself and (Franz)
Beckenbauer. We decided that the format is too long and too much for the
players. We have to cut, no doubt. It is important to find a way to
protect the players and to protect the games.
South American football has severe financial problems. Yet without
the huge budgets of European football academies the youth teams have
tremendous success. How do you explain that?
In South America lots
of people have financial problems. Unfortunately as a Brazilian I have to
say, Brazil may be the worst. The big teams like Santos and Flamengo are
almost bankrupt. In Europe a lot of teams are in a bad financial
situation, but they have good players and know where they spend the money.
Lots of teams in South America are bankrupt because they stole the money.
The money disappears. They don’t have players, they don’t have a stadium.
They have nothing.
Some people compare the Brazil’s team today with your team from
1970, especially the forwards. How do you rate the current
crop?
Brazil have always had good individual players, and it is
hard to compare because individually we always have talent. The best
organised team in the whole history of Brazilian football was in the 70’s
with Pelé, Gerson, Jairzinho and Tostao. But individually the best World
Cup team for me was the one in 1958. You had Garrincha, Djalma Santos and
Pelé. We do have a lot of excellent players now like Kaka, the two
Ronaldos and Ailton.
We used to say in Brazil -- inside of the field, Brazil is the best team, nobody can compete with us. Outside of that, in administrative ways, it is the worst team. Europe is well organised. I once talked to Franz Beckenbauer about this, and he said in Germany it takes 10 years to have one excellent player. (Michael) Ballack for example is 28, and in the last eight or 10 years Germany doesn’t have anybody like Ballack. He said that in Brazil we have luck; we have so many players, and he doesn’t know why the administration is so bad. But Germany has their problems too, of course, even though they reached the final in 2002. They didn’t win, but they were in the final, and this is because they have a good organisation outside.
Who are the young players you think are the future big stars of
football? Tevez, Robinho, Rooney …?
I think Kaká can be one. But
then it is becoming a little complicated. When you start to get well
known, the pressure gets higher. Then you have to prove if you are a big
star.
Do you think there can be somebody in the future as big as
you?
People always try to compare players with Pelé. Every good
player that appears, the people compare with me. I used to say ‘maybe one
day…,’ but there will be no more Pelés because my mother and my father
closed the machine. Please do not try to compare. Maybe you got somebody
with the same style, but Pelé -- no more. Who is going to be like
Beckenbauer in Germany? No one.
What do you expect for the 2006 FIFA World Cup?
Football
always is a big surprise. You never know what’s going to happen. For the
last World Cup I picked Argentina und France to reach the final. And we
all know what happened. That was a big surprise. I think Germany, Brazil,
England and Italy could reach the final. But, we could have a surprise.
I was very young, only 8 year old at the time, but I remember it because my father was a soccer player in our home town and he had gathered all his team mates in our house to listen to the game on the radio. Before the game there was a big party and everybody was happy. But after the game I saw my father crying and when I asked him why, he said: “Oh, you know, we lost the World Cup”. This was obviously an enormous disappointment for the whole country. Then I said to my father: ‘Don’t worry, when I grow up I’m going to win the World Cup for you.’ Little did I know then, that eight years later, in 1958, I would be in there. It was a gift from God – a fantastic memory.
What was it like in 1958? Did you realize then how big it
was?
No, no, not exactly, I was only 17 years old, and it was my
first trip out of Brazil. My dream was to play like my father, but I never
dreamed to be the master of the team that won the World Cup.
And how did you feel when you arrived in Sweden, a country so
different from your own?
You know, we had a lot of surprises
because the country was completely different from Brazil. The one thing
that especially hit me though was that only the Brazilian team had black
players. At that time, none of the other national teams had any black
players. So I think we also did a lot of work socially because we opened
the world for the black community. This was a big surprise for us, but it
was fantastic.
How was it in 1962, when you were forced to let down your team mates
after being injured? Did you still have the same feeling winning this
World Cup?
You know, always when you get injured, you are extremely
disappointed because you prepared all year to be in the World Cup. But
fortunately Brazil won the World Cup and I played in the beginning so I
felt comfortable with it.
In 1970, you probably looked your best ever with the national team.
How can you explain so much creativity in this tournament,
specifically?
I think this happened because I was injured in 1966,
and it was my last World Cup. The World Cup was a very tough one and
Brazil lost. After 1966, the first two or three months I thought that I
would not play in the World Cup again. But later on I started thinking
that I would have the chance to show to myself, to Brazil and to the world
one more time, this will be the moment, my opportunity to be the best in
the game. So, I started to prepare myself psychologically and physically,
and I think this was the principle reason why I became the one I was in
1970.