Pelé transited between politicians, but was frustrated when he was one of them

In 1984, Ronaldo Kotscho, a historic photographer for Placar, embarked on a particular mission: to photograph Pelé with a T-shirt in favor of Diretas Já. The then director of the magazine, Juca Kfouri, did not believe in the idea, on the grounds that other magazines and newspapers had also tried and failed.

But Kotscho, called a Alemão by his colleagues, insisted and at least managed to get a ticket to Rio de Janeiro, where Pelé was filming the film “Pedro Mico”. Upon arriving at Morro do Pavãozinho, the scene of the filming, the photographer approached the King of Football, who sensed the reason for the visit. “German, you scoundrel, I already know what you came to do.”

The journalist had to insist a lot for the three-time world champion to accept being photographed with the shirt on. He was a model dressed by the Brazilian national team at the time, but with the inscription “Diretas Já!” in bold letters. Pelé gave Kotscho ten seconds to record it. “I pressed the button on my Nikon camera and it was like listening to an orchestra,” reports the photographer.

The photo, which was on the cover of Placar, illustrates one of Pelé’s rare public manifestations about politics. And in the case of Diretas, particularly, it was a position on a theme (the end of the dictatorship) sensitive to the trajectory of the King, accused of serving the interests of the military regime as a player.

In the documentary released by Netflix in 2021, the former athlete is confronted about his relationship with the dictatorship. In the production images, the handshake with General Emílio Garrastazu Médici, president of Brazil at the time of the third world championship, in 1970, a period of greater repression during the military government, appears.

“Military rulers needed to claim legitimacy through alternative means to the popular vote. For this, they idealized the ‘Brasil Grande’ project, whose purpose was to extol national conquests and virtues. Pelé was the greatest incarnation of this. Not by chance, in this period –and even later– football and the national team were invested with a deeper patriotic symbology than any civil or military figure of the time”, says Aníbal Chaim, PhD in Political Science from USP.

However, despite the momentary success of the regime in capitalizing on the popularity of Pelé and the world champion Brazilian team, there was an episode of conflict between the King and the military government during the Medici administration.

Shortly after winning in Mexico, Pelé decided to retire from the Brazilian national team. In his view, it was a great opportunity to close this chapter of his biography on a high note and take advantage of the image of Athlete of the Century to boost his business career. The government, however, wanted to keep Pelé longer in the service of the national team.

“Pelé will have a confrontation with the government that you can characterize as one of the strongest confrontations of a Brazilian athlete with the military regime. It was not motivated by a political principle, by a disagreement with the dictatorship. It was a divergence of interests, of the interests of the regime and Pelé’s interests for his business career”, says José Paulo Florenzano, coordinator of the Social Sciences course and professor at the Department of Anthropology at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP).

In 1971, Pelé made two farewells to the Brazilian national team: the first at Morumbi, in a friendly against Austria, which ended in a 1-1 tie, and the second at Maracanã, against Yugoslavia, in a new tie – this time 2-2. There were, however, a series of celebrations planned for the King’s retirement, but which were canceled due to the player’s arm wrestling with the CBD (current CBF), chaired by João Havelange.

The director, who wanted to be president of FIFA, organized the Mini Cup in 1972 and wanted the presence of the Athlete of the Century. He even threatened him with Decree-Law 5199, which, according to him, gave him the right to call up any player for the national team.

Jarbas Passarinho, then Minister of Education and Culture who had set up a commission for the festivities, dissolved the body in light of Pelé’s refusal to continue performing for the national team.

Despite the pressures faced, Pelé insisted on ending his career in the service of the national team, crowned with three world championship titles.

“The Farewell Ceremony, as I call this process, has a very important symbolic struggle. There was also a speech about putting black people in their place. When Pelé claimed his right to leave the Brazilian national team, he wanted to take over the business activity, of business, and the discourse was the discourse of a socio-racial order, which designated the four lines of the field as the place of the black”, says Florenzano.

“Both João Havelange, Médici and later Geisel, turned public opinion against Pelé. To characterize him as a deserter, traitor, mercenary. Pelé is a much more complex figure than one imagines and believes. His strategy it wasn’t one of confrontation, as in the case of Muhammad Ali. But it’s essential to talk about Pelé’s legacy. His fight to occupy a place as a businessman is extremely important. And it’s not by chance that he was criticized by sectors of the press, the public opinion, from the government, who wanted him to occupy only the position of athlete.”

On his trip to the United States to perform for the New York Cosmos, architected in part by the then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, Pelé began his tradition of taking pictures with US presidents. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama… All of these shook hands with the King.

In Brazil, of course, it was no different. However, more than shaking hands for a photo, there were those who wanted to have Pelé in their own government.

“After the dictatorship ended, I was asked by most presidents to be Minister of Sports: first by Tancredo Neves, in 1985; then by his successor, José Sarney, and then by Fernando Collor, when he won the election in 1989. Always I refused. However, when Fernando Henrique Cardoso was elected in 1994, the invitation was repeated. So I concluded that it was the right time to accept”, he says in “Pelé: the Autobiography”, published in 2006.

In the book, Edson Arantes do Nascimento reports that his experience as a minister was not positive. His management defended two pillars: the opening for clubs to become companies and the end of the pass law, whose project would be sanctioned by FHC in 1998 and would be called “Lei Pelé”.

Frustrated, he left the ministry in 1998, shortly before the start of the World Cup, in which he worked as a commentator for Globo.

“I didn’t know that doing politics is fighting one battle after another. It was a steep learning curve. What depressed me the most in Brasilia was discovering that politicians were more interested in helping themselves than helping young people,” said Pelé, accustomed to moving skillfully between politicians, but who did not like being one of them.