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Brazil, Soccer, Brazil: Pele and the 1950 World Cup
Brazil, Football, Brazil: Pele, Origin
The day has come for Pele to leave his hometown of Bauru to play soccer for Santos, a small but successful club named after the port city where it is based. It's Sunday, and Pele and his father have an early morning bus ride to São Paulo, where they'll meet up with former player and current junior soccer coach Waldemar de Brito (a Brazilian soccer celebrity who has played for Brazil) at the São Paulo train station.
the national team
Waldemar recognized Pele's talent and contacted his acquaintances at Santos to arrange a meeting (a tryout), and then took Pele and his son to Santos to meet the team members; Pele said he couldn't close his eyes on the way, what was waiting for him up ahead? Is he good enough to play? Will he be able to live on his own without his parents?
After the meeting, Waldemar de Brito started to teach Pele his first lesson, telling him that even if he went to Santos, he still had to keep playing the way he had been playing in Baru, and that he shouldn't be afraid of the Santos stars, even though his hands were tied at the beginning, but that the people in the Santos club were very professional and would give you the help you needed. ...... also told Pele to be very careful with the media, that you should not read the newspapers or listen to the radio, and that you should never touch the newspapers or the radio, especially before a match! Pele says that this lesson has benefited him a lot, and that he has tried to minimize the influence of the media in the rest of his career, but of course, the media is still a big part of his life, and he is very proud of it. Of course, he still reads the parts of the media that praise him!
When the three finally arrived in Santos, Pele said he saw what he wanted to see the most on the bus, meaning a large, sparkling blue sea, more than Pele could have imagined, and he was so excited that he screamed, waking up the passengers. Take it easy, kid, Waldemar said to Pele with a slightly surprised smile: we'll show you later. So the first thing they did when they got off the bus was to run to the beach and walk along it. Pele said he had never seen a real ocean before, and he scooped up the sand with his own hands and tasted the water, which was an eye-opening experience. He was only 15 years old, a boy who had just left the small town of Baru, and then they arrived at the Santos soccer club, from which moment on Pele would be swept up by a tornado, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and would enter a world he had never experienced before, because two years after his first glimpse of the sea Pele would be carried on the shoulders of his teammates in celebration for helping the Brazilian team win its first world championship. Brazil win their first World Cup title ......
The day he reported to the team was a Sunday and Santos was playing that day, Waldemar got seats for Pele and his son, Pele couldn't take his eyes off the pitch for a moment, look at them, those men are real soccer stars, they're playing in the top professional leagues, and from that moment on Pele said that he switched to supporting Santos (in the past he had always been a Corinthians Corinthians fans)! After the game Waldemar took him into the players' lounge, where everyone was looking happy because of the win, and when Santos' coach Luis Alonso, nicknamed Lula, saw Pele, he jokingly said: "So you're the famous Pele, right? Pele timidly said I am (because Pele knows he's a million miles away from being famous), and Lula laughed out loud and said he was looking forward to Pele joining the team and hoped that Pele would feel comfortable and happy in Santos. Santos' Vasconcelos put his arms around Pele's neck and said to his father, "We'll take good care of this boy"!
In his autobiography Pele writes that he looks back in amazement at how much he changed in those 2 years. It seemed as if he had hitched a ride on the
rockets
Likewise, excited and somewhat uncontrollable, always climbing towards an unpredictable goal, he said he couldn't control those drastic changes, so he simply closed his eyes and enjoyed them. Here he was not referring to fame or glory, because in essence, he did not think that sports had much to do with fame or glory, he was talking about his gradual discovery of his own talent, the most important thing for a person is to discover his own talent, hammer it to perfection, and then, if you are lucky enough to show your talent and get the recognition of others, the pleasure of surpassing and finally standing out among similar people, is the best feeling for every person. The pleasure of excelling and finally standing out from your peers is something everyone can feel. And Pele says he was able to do that in 1956-1958, which was one of the best and most satisfying things in his life. ......