Why Soccer Matters
Pele with Brian Winter
Penguin
R699
Pp 292
In Why Soccer Matters, Pele provides an insider?s peek into his world. As he deals with fame and the price it extracts from him, it seems a give-and-take relationship.
The narrative of the book flows along with memorable anecdotes, but fewer insights. The book, which journeys through five World Cups, ending with the 2014 edition, begins with the 1950 World Cup final between hosts Brazil and Uruguay. That day has reached near-mythical beast proportions for Brazilians, and Pele and co-author Brian Winter explain how it might have been pivotal in Brazilians clambering on to a platform that was loosely founded on a shared idea of Brazil.
Football, as per Pele, has given Brazilians a sense of identity they never shared, across the diversity and inequalities that ranged across the country.
Pele?s childhood story is a fascinating read due to Edson?s (Pele?s original name) story. The boy who grew up to be a ?king? was immensely talented, worked hard and, even at that time, showed a streak of impetuousness, as is evidenced in the verbal dressing down he gets when taunting and trash-talking friends he played football with near his home in Tres Coracoes. He goes on to say he never forgot that lesson.
Edson is in evidence intermittently while Pele lords over much of the book. ?For a boy like me, it was all pretty overwhelming,? Pele writes. ?Not on the field?there, I was always in control?but off it. So the persona I adopted was a kind of defence mechanism. Having Pele around helped keep Edson sane.?
His journey through America?he was sold the idea of ?winning a country??is explained in detail, even as the book leans towards an American audience.
The years before Edson turned into Pele form the most interesting part of the book, painting a picture of Brazil that is still a reality for readers in large parts of the world.
Pele?s support for the World Cup has seen lots turn on him, a theme that runs through the book. In fact, fame and Pele seem at constant odds.
But why should soccer matter? The book does not answer that question directly despite suggesting that Brazilian identity, at least in part, may be based on it. What does come through, undisguised, is that Edson Arantes Do Nascimento, named after the inventor Thomas Edison, succeeds in putting the ?i? in his name, which his parents forgot, firmly in the book.
Football does matter to Pele, and he matters to football. The game?s first global superstar is not about to let the reader forget that a boy who was once uncomfortable with the limelight and took refuge in a nickname?an identity he tried to script on his own terms?now situates himself in it with decreasing reflexivity. He also puts a wall between himself and the world that looks up to, and criticises, him in equal measure?a wall known as Pele.
The reader does get a peek into Edson?s life, but the door bolts much too fast. As for the name of the book, Why Pele Matters To Soccer or Why Soccer Matters To Me would have been a more honest representation of what lies within it? and maybe the player too.
