the interview, exhumed by the INA, was broadcast at the end of June 1970 in the “20 Heures” newspaper of the second French channel, a few days after Pelé’s third planetary coronation of Brazil. Just out of his hairdresser, in the middle of a swarm of kids, the Auriverde idol, who died this Thursday at the age of 82, assures against all evidence “to be a man like the others”.
“Are you rich? », dares a journalist in Portuguese. “I am in health and fame, replies the best player of all time, the impeccable degradation and a crooked smile. If only I had half of the money they loan me, then I’d be a rich man. »
50 years later, the spanish daily El Mundo assured that the former poor kid of Tres Corações, shoe shiner in his childhood, had a heritage of 100 million dollars in 2020, mainly built in real estate. Between the two dates, Pelé remained a legend. He was appointed ambassador of the UN, Unicef or even UNESCO and became the first black Minister of Sports in his country, from 1995 to 1998.
The New York Turn
But the King has also become a sandwich man, collecting the lucrative partnerships as Xavier Gravelaine stacked the clubs during his career. “He was a global icon so he had enormous demands, observes sociologist Michel Raspaud, author ofHistory of football in Brazil, published by Chandeigne. He advertised anything and everything, both charity and business. When he went to the Cosmos in New York [en 1975], he was an ambassador for the Warner Communications group which owned the club. It was from that moment that he really became the businessman we know, the person who sells the Pelé brand to anyone who is interested. »
Previously, Pelé was also the player-scorer-ambassador of Santos, who monetized the price of endless intercontinental tours, which also allowed him to turn the clock, and to charge a record of 1,283 achievements at the end of career. His (almost) forever club also saved him from bankruptcy in the heart of the 1960s, when his Spanish manager José González Ozores, aka Pepe El Gordo, pushed him to invest in a construction equipment company.
The company Sanitaria Santista, with visibly fragile foundations, will swallow up a good part of Pelé’s savings in its fall. In return for this rescue, the icon had to sign a new contract with Santos, not as advantageous as he was entitled to hope given his immeasurable talent, before joining the United States.
“He left for the Cosmos in New York because he had suffered a second bankruptcy with malicious people”, explains Michel Raspaud. From there, the pigeon is gluttonous. Figure of behemoths like MasterCard and Pepsi, of luxury brands (Hublot, Vuitton) or much more mainstream (Subway), among – many – other sponsors, Pelé will not leave the commercial forefront until his death. . After changing the face of football during his career, he is bringing the biggest sport in the world into the all-business era.
“Like a Chameleon”
“He was like a chameleon, judges the sociologist. They offered him Viagra, he did Viagra, they offered him MasterCard, he did MasterCard without distinction, from the moment the money came in. The pub for the drug against erectile dysfunction, produced in 2002, will make people talk, and the person concerned, then in his sixties, will feel obliged to specify that he has never had recourse to it.
Other nuggets have improved over time, such as this advertisement for the antediluvian Atari 2600 console in the early 1980s, in the company of basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and racing driver Mario Andretti. And what about the one shot in France for the Loto sportif in 1987, when the King, in outfits rooted in the era, arrived in a PMU bar in the midst of enthusiastic customers?
Starting from the very bottom of the social ladder in a fundamentally unequal country, Pelé did everything to ensure that he and his large family (three successive wives and seven recognized children) lacked nothing, sometimes even giving the impression of spoil. “It was absolutely not a venal person”, assures Michel Raspaud, however, who recalls an anecdote from his youth. “In 1958, when Brazil won their first World Cup, each player won a car. Pelé gave his to his father. »
A talented footballer with a career shattered by an injury that plunged his family into poverty, João Ramos do Nascimento, known as Dondinho, did not have to deal with an ingrate with his prodigy and prodigal son. The same who said, in the famous interview for the second French channel mentioned at the very beginning of the article: “I think that money, with a score of 1 to 10, comes last. But must one always believe a King?