It was only about 10 days ago when Lionel Messi was regarded as the “greatest of all time” in soccer after Argentina’s World Cup win over France.
But Edson Arantes do Nascimento — forever known as Pele, or the Black Pearl, or The King — this long-time superstar, this first global superstar of the world’s global game, wrested the title of “greatest of all time” back simply from taking his last breath this afternoon.
It is hard to argue against the Brazilian.
Pele was a statistical singularity. He played on three World Cup-winning teams, more than any player, male or female. He has scored more than 1,200 goals for club and country. He scored in two World Cup finals, something done by only one other male player.
Pele was a social justice warrior. He was a voice for the poor in a country where dark-skinned people were marginalized. He never forgot where he came from, visiting hospitals, doing charity work, and doing a lot of work with youth soccer.
Pele was an artist. Some of his goals — and assists — still boggle the mind when you watch the footage. One of his most legendary moves wasn’t captured on film: it instead had to be generated by computer. In the sequence, he would do a skill called a sombrero — volleying the ball to himself into space behind an opponent. But Pele did this four times in one phase of possession in a win by Santos (his club team in Brazil) over league rival Athletico Juventus, eventually scoring off a jumping header.
Pele was a true showman. In his 1977 retirement match in East Rutherford, N.J., he took to the Giants Stadium Astroturf (something unheard of today), he connected on a free kick when everybody in the building — including the opposing team — knew what was coming.
Pele was also a transcendant figure as the game changed from a game played by hard men with a heavy leather ball to a game played by athletic and skilled players who were pushing around the lighter Telstar spotted ball which became a global hallmark of the game.
Pele was one of the only players who is being remembered today as much for his missed chances as for the goals he scored. His artistry and his imagination were years before the likes of Maradona, Messi, and Mbappe.
But I think one of his biggest impacts has to have been his two-year professional stint for the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League. It was, in the 1970s, unthinkable for a world global superstar to try to kick-start a sport in a country where a national team game would get only a couple of thousand fans in a high-school stadium in St. Louis.
There’s a Greatest Sports Legends episode in which Pele was interviewed by legendary George Plimpton in amongst the soccer fields of Trenton State College, an interview was conducted around 1980. Though the North American Soccer League would fold only about five years later, his efforts eventually kick-started efforts to start a sanctioned Division I professional league in the United States, to get the game going amongst female participants.
Without Pele, there wouldn’t be crowds of 80,000 people watching soccer matches in the United States. There would not be four stars on the U.S. women’s national team’s shirts. Without Pele, there would not be young Americans plying their trade in a national league or for overseas clubs. And it wouldn’t have sparked a culture in which the United States would buy more World Cup tickets than almost every other participating nation during recent World Cups.
Thanks, Pele.
TopOfTheCircle.com 
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