Pele: the 50th year

What a glorious irony it was, looking back, that the psychologist officially attached to the team strongly advised that Pele should not be chosen!

Sunday, June 29, will be a doubly significant day in football annals. First there is the final of the European Championship to be played. Secondly, and historically, it will be the 50th anniversary of the 17-year-old Pele’s marvellous performance for Brazil in the World Cup final in Stockholm. And I was there.

Pele scored twice in that final against the host country, Sweden; two gloriously memorable goals, with foot and head. That made the total of his World Cup goals to half a dozen. Doubtless it would have been more, had he been fit to play in Brazil’s two opening games, against Austria and England. A narrow, uneasy win, and a goalless draw.

Before he kicked a ball, one heard all about the phenomenal Pele from Brazilian journalists, watching training sessions in the Gothenburg Ullevi Stadium where Brazil would play three of their matches, and where Pele would make his World Cup debut so thrillingly, against the Soviet Union. One of the most senior of those journalists, Albert Laurence, told me emphatically that Pele was a tremendous talent. At that point, the 17-year-old, though a Brazilian international from the age of 16, had hardly been heard of in Europe and certainly not in England.

What a glorious irony it was, looking back, that the psychologist officially attached to the team strongly advised that Pele should not be chosen! He was far too immature, the psychologist insisted, quite incapable of fitting in with the tactics of the team. I spoke to the psychologist at the Ullevi stadium, during a Brazilian training session. He was a small, unshaven bespectacled man from Sao Paolo, who favoured grey jerseys, and complained that while many journalists had interviewed him, no one had sent him the articles.

He gave tests, he told me, which entailed the players drawing the figure of a man. The more sophisticated drew comparatively complete figures, the less sophisticated, match stick men. They made good wing partnerships, the psychologist said. He didn’t believe in dealing with players individually, he explained, because this served only to increase their problems. Yet, nor did he believe in haranguing the players in groups. Defenders, he said, should control their aggression, attackers should exploit it. He also advised against the choice of the maverick outside-right Garrincha, a child and force of nature, who would eventually and so profitably be talked into the team by his fellow players.

Asked about the psychologist, the Brazilian manager, Vicente Feola, shrugged his heavy shoulders. “How can he know the scene?” he enquired. At a Press conference just before the final, he was still less complimentary. “Senhor Feola is not saying he wished the psychologist would go to hell,” explained the interpreter, “But he is thinking it.” But when Brazil had triumphantly won the Stockholm final, the joyful psychologist helped to carry the flag around the stadium.

Pele, from Bauru in the state of Minas Gerais, son of a footballer, brought on by the Santos clubs which he would inspire to heights of conquest, tormented the Russian defence in Gothenburg, hitting one post with a tremendous right-footed drive, after an irresistible Garrincha had struck the other. Pele stood only 5ft 8in, but he leaped to astonishing heights for his headers, and though he weighted about 10-1/2 stone, he feared no opponent. And indeed would be known in future for his ability to take painful revenge on those who maltreated him; though the Portuguese would kick him out of the 1966 World Cup, in England.

After the easy 2-0 success against the Russians, the quarter-final against Wales may well have seemed a mere formality. The truth was that Wales shouldn’t really have been there at all. They had been knocked out in the eliminators but lived to fight again when the Afro-Asian bloc refused to play against Israel. FIFA drew Uruguay out of a hat to play the Israelis but the proud former World Cup winners refused. Wales had no such qualms, beating Israel 2-0 home and away.

So, in Gothenburg, they faced Brazil, after a splendid win over a brutal Hungarian side. Who, alas, had kicked the giant John Charles, jewel of the Welsh attack, out of action. Who knows what he and his formidable head might have done, early in the game, when the high crosses came so invitingly over? Rising far above themselves, Wales gallantly contained the Brazilian stars till in the second-half Pele scored what he would later call the most important goal of his career; scrappy though it was. In confusion around the Wales goal, Pele at last got in a shot which was deflected past a gallant ’keeper in Jack Kelsey, off the right-back, Stuart Williams.

So Brazil were in the Stockholm semifinal against a gifted French team. Pele would now score a hat-trick, but who knows what might have happened had the elegant French centre-half, Bob Jonquet, not been crippled in the first-half? There were no substitutes, then. And no one to restrain an irresistible Pele. His goals all came in the Jonquet-less second-half.

So to the Stockholm final. “If we score first,” said the remarkable little Yorkshire manager of Sweden, George Raynor, who’d won the 1948 Olympic title with them, got them to third place in the 1950 Brazilian World Cup, and managed Lazio when I knew him in Rome, “Brazil will panic all over the show.” Sweden did, through Nils Liedholm, in four minutes, but Brazil didn’t. Instead two glorious bursts down the right made two goals for Vava. And in the second-half, Pele excelled. He had already smashed a shot against a post. Now, on 55 minutes, with sublime courage, skill and impertinence surrounded by big opponents in a packed penalty box, he coolly caught the ball on his thigh, hooked it over his head, and volleyed it thunderously home. He got Brazil’s fifth goal, too, with the score at 4-2, rising majestically to Zagallo’s cross from the left to head the ball home.

Injuries would put him out of both the 1962, Chilean, and 1966, English, World Cup tournaments but he returned triumphantly again to inspire Brazil’s 1970 success, full of astonishing stratagems, heading another of his spectacular goals against Italy in the final, when he made two other Brazilian goals in the second-half. Yet, for me, the memories of that astonishing day in Stockholm 50 years ago remain the most vivid of all.