I have a tape of the History of Celtic Football and the fouls that were not called we amazing.....players actually went after the goalkeepers after they had saved and had possession of the ball. So players were definitely not protected like they are today And when you watch the highlights they showed last night and you see how Pele ran at players and was able to turn them around and cut back on them, I think he would be just as good if not better today, but I do think defenders today are better athletes and would not get turn around so easily and would have more pace to keep up with PELE. That being said, when he threw it into the next gear, he absolutely blew past people....awesome to watch
My Life and the Beautiful Game is a fun psuedo-auto-biography about Pele. If you want to read about Pele's perspective, check it out from a library.
Well I hope that SHUTS UP Maradona lovers when it comes to saying that PELE played in a day when it didnt take much to be a player. Without the yellow and red cards playing back then was CRUEL and Pele Still shined. Maradona would have been a marked man also and at his small size he probably wouldnt have made it through half of his career. Today in the "call everything a foul" world Pele would shine even more. >>I was surprised that Pele's son spoke English so well. How long did he lived in the States?>> I beleiev he was born here and probably spent the first few talking years of his life here, at that point you usually dont "lose" the language.
I was very disappointed to see that erroneous information included. I work on behalf of MasterCard and spent the World Cup setting up interviews for Pele. In fact, if you watched the Pele webcast that was promoted at fifaworldcup.com, that's me interviewing Pele. I probably set up about 100 interviews for Pele during the World Cup. Pele didn't pocket a dime. Pele is paid by MasterCard a set amount for all the work he does for them. MasterCard doesn't charge anybody a penny to speak with Pele. In fact when I call up newspapers and offer them an interview they often ask how much it is going to cost. When I say nothing you can almost hear the surprised looked on their face over the phone. Now, if some company, let's say Nike, wanted Pele to speak at a corporate function would he charge them for his time? Yes, of course. Would it run about 20 grand? Yeah, probably. This is no different from what Joe Torre or Pat Riley or any other celeb does. But that is far different from saying he charges for each interview. Overall I thought it was a good show, you could have probably done another 30 minutes easy to show more Cosmos stuff, movies and post-career endeavors.
Oh c'mon. He stole the show in Victory. "Hatch. We must go back. This game means a lot to us. Please Hatch"
The major flaw here was that A&E simply took a BBC documentary and gave it an American narration. The result is far too Anglocentric. You would think that all Brazil had to do to win the World Cup in 1970 was beat England! They showed several minutes of footage from England-Brazil, but nothing from Brazil's matches against Uruguay or Peru. And there was hardly anything about Pele's move to Cosmos, except that it wiped out his debts. The guy is the most important figure in the history of American soccer, but you would never have guessed it from that Biography. Shame on you, A&E, spend some of your own freaking dough and produce your own freaking documentary, you cheap bastards!
ESPN Sportscentruy For a long time I have wondered why they have never done a Sportscentury biography on Pele. ESPN needs to get together and produce one. Take a look at some of the jokers they have done a Sportscentury on (Mark Fidrych, Jimmy Piersall, etc.). To not have one of Pele is stupid. We would then see alot more of his influence on the game in America.
Let's see, he moved to Cosmos, made a boatload of money, and was resposible for the American soccer boom. He starred in Victory, the greatest movie of all time. He has served as Minister of Sport in Brazil. He has travelled the world ten times over, to adoring audiences everywhere. He has undoubtedly bedded bevies of beautiful babes less than half his age, AND HE'S MAKING 20 MIL A YEAR! I'm sure Pele doesn't think his story his sad.
How sick was that save that the English goalie (Shilton????) had against Pele in that 70 WC game! The one where he dives to his left to barely reach a header and deflects it up and out of bounds with his wrist.
Speaking of Cosmos Pele footage--anyone know where his Cosmos highlights can be gotten a hold of? Or maybe like 74-79 NASL highlights?
Re: Re: A&E Bio on PELE Tonight! Exactly, if they can't make a documentary exactly the way they want it, they should continue ignoring soccer so we can complain about that instead.
Re: Re: Re: A&E Bio on PELE Tonight! The point is: they did a half-ass job. It was unprofessional. It was not up to their standards. I think it is fair game to point that out. I'm sorry if I offended the "we should be thankful that they covered soccer at all" brigade.
Re: Re: Re: Re: A&E Bio on PELE Tonight! And yet, there was 60 minutes of coverage for soccer that nobody expected. And guess what? We're not their core audience. The average A&E biography viewer knows as much about Pele as they saw on last night's show, and if that interests them, I think it's great. If the biography had been on FSW, I'd agree with you.
Hatch, Hatch. Halftime, Halftime. ... "You don keek well, you don dreeble well, but I theenk you can be good golkeeper."
It was a pretty awe-inspiring just to see some of the live footage that we NEVER see in the states unless we own a rare copy of a game we bought from bigsoccer store's or some other soccer video outlet. What I loved was how his teammates like Carlos Alberto praised him for being a setup man (remember the winning goal in the 1-0 win over England in 1970 that Pele created for Gerson?) as well as a great scorer. Just showing another dimension of his phenomenal game, as well as the statement his play made about him "being finished" before the '70 cup when the coach didn't want to select him for the squad. I love what his other teammate (name escapes me) said about Pele running into the locker room after winning the Cup and yelling "I'm not dead! I'm not dead!" I agree that the overall theme was overly negative, and it seemed to skip a lot of his life in the last three decades, especially the 80s and 90s, other than his business failures and being in debt. Definitely we needed more Cosmos highlights and more on his impact here in the U.S. (for the American audience watching if no other reason) helping the game become popular and making NASL the first big-time pro soccer league to succeed in the modern, TV era of sports in the United States. I agree about A&E -- more originality and less reliance on British sources would've improved the piece's overall quality. Still, happy to see it nonetheless -- ESPN Classic is definitely behind the curve when it comes to the "Black Pearl".
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A&E Bio on PELE Tonight! Being an AMERICAN audience, wouldn't they have been better served by at least spending a few minutes discussing his time at Cosmos and its effect on AMERICAN sports? I think your average A&E viewer would have found that more enlightening than an endless parade of British players or journalists. I know who Bobby Charlton and Alan Mullery are, but does the core audience of A&E?
Someone please paste all the complaints about the show on the A&E board dedicated to the Pele show. You never know maybe they will listen. It was there about 2 years ago that I complained that their was no PELE Biography and 2 years later... Go here.. http://www.biography.com/cgi-bin/fr...eads/wwwthreads.pl?action=list&Board=worldcup
This documentary is EXACTLY how a documentary about Pele should be produced --- by the Brits. I mean, an American produced Pele documentary would include lots of Cosmos coverage, which is the least significant part in Pele's career (aside from the $$$ he made). Who are we kidding here? Pele's defining moment in his career was 1958-1970, not 1975-1977. How many Pele fans in the world actually care that he played 2 years for the Cosmos? Which game would you rather watch? Santos x Benfica in the 1962 World Club Championsihp (Pele's first official encounter with Eusebio)? or New York Cosmos x New England Teamen? Of course, homer Americans would prefer the Cosmos, but I doubt anyone outside of the U.S. would. And who are the best qualified English speaking players to talk about Pele? Moore? Mullery? Charlton? or Kyle Rote Jr.?