The hot afternoon when Pelé dribbled past Folha

It was around 2:30 pm on April 6, 2016 when a black SUV pulled up in front of the Sheet. On that warm autumn afternoon in São Paulo, my colleague Rogério Gentile, then editorial secretary, and I, Sports editor at the time, were on the sidewalk waiting for Pelé, who left us this Thursday (29th) at the age of 82.

The back door of the car opened and he slowly set foot on Barão de Limeira. At that moment, looking around, I realized that a circle had quickly formed: friends from the newsroom, colleagues from other departments of the newspaper, clerks from the neighboring bakery, curious people passing by on the street. The King had arrived.

To the surprise of everyone there, Pelé had a cane in his left hand. He was the first dribble in our expectations: at 75 years old, the biggest name in the history of the country’s sport —in our imagination, a fortress— walked with difficulty and showed a certain fragility.

Soon, however, came a second feint in the opposite direction: the physical weakness in no way affected Pelé’s charisma, who greeted everyone who approached him and signed some autographs.

In 2016, the year of the visit, curiously enough, six decades had passed since the first mention of the player in the pages of the newspaper. Pelé was mentioned in a brief account of Santos’ 7-1 defeat of Corinthians de Santo André. The 15-year-old had scored his sixth goal of the game, the first of 1,283 goals over a career spanning 1,365 games.

It was a record of the September 8, 1956 edition of Folha da Manhã, a newspaper that, together with Folha da Tarde and Folha da Noite, gave rise to the Folha de S.Paulo four years later.

When leaving the elevator on the ninth floor, where he would be received for coffee, Pelé saw Juca Kfouri, whom he embraced effusively. That afternoon “marked our reunion after a long time and it was as if we had seen each other the day before”, recalls the columnist.

There were always four or five advisors at the side of the ace, in addition to two or three security guards. In other circumstances, such an entourage would prevent interlocutors from feeling at ease. Not with Pelé—another olé of him in what seemed obvious.

As if he were an old friend, he chatted with everyone who was waiting for him, such as Sérgio Dávila, then executive editor (now editor-in-chief), Vinicius Mota, editor-in-chief, and Maria Cristina Frias, editor of the Mercado Aberto column.

“Are there any Santos here?”, he asked. Thrilled and a bit embarrassed, the waiter Nivaldo Fonseca replied that yes, he supports the Baixada club. Pelé hugged him and said he had a friend in the interior of São Paulo with the same name.

“I didn’t get to see Pelé at the stadium, but I watched it a lot on TV. I loved it when he celebrated goals by throwing punches in the air”, says Fonseca, who continues to collaborate with the Sheet.

Moments later, Gentile asked the guest a question: after more than 40 years of Pelé’s time, with the advancement of athletes’ physical preparation, what would it be like now? In a football with more speed, would he continue to be —if he was active— so superior to the others?

The most famous Brazilian of all time began to enumerate the conditions of his period: the ball and boot were heavier than those used today; the lawns were not so well tended; defenders were more violent. And he finished off, smiling, with another question: “Do you think I would still be a good player?”

After a few minutes, Pelé went to the next room to give an interview to Kfouri, to the then reporter Camila Mattoso (today director of the Brasilia branch of the Sheet) and me, recorded by TV Folha.

Kfouri asked the first question: “Do you prefer to be called you, sir or your majesty?” An interviewee without ginga might be disconcerted, not him. “You can call me ‘honey’. People call me Senhor Pelé, Seu Pelé. And I say: ‘There are so many adjectives and are you going to call me Seu Pelé?’ Call me Edson, call me King.”

In the interview, he stated for the first time that he believed there was a medical error in his first hip surgery. According to him, US doctors had pointed out the occurrence of a failure in an operation to which he underwent in 2012 at the Albert Einstein hospital, in São Paulo. This alleged error led him to undergo another surgery in 2015, this time at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

The day after the interview, Roberto Dantas, the orthopedist in charge of the surgery at the Einstein, stated that “there was no mistake and we are sure of that”.

On the day of the visit to Sheet, Pelé said he didn’t feel pain. “I even joked with my doctor that my opportunity at the Olympics had arrived,” she said of the Rio de Janeiro Games, which would begin four months later.

The blue clock at the front desk Sheet it was 3:50 pm when Pelé said goodbye to everyone. The story, the one that leaves the newspapers to win the books, had raced before our eyes, but we hardly noticed it—the King’s kindness made everything seem very natural. That was the ultimate dribble.