Pele becomes the king of New York

Pele is the first to break into football in the United States, where he finished his career at the New York Cosmos. When he played there, all his opponents wanted to swap shirts with him. The club was required to give each of its opponents a shirt after each match. “Pele was the star attraction,” said Gordon Bradley, one of the club’s managers at the time. “Sometimes we had to take 25 or 30 shirts with us to a game, otherwise we would never have made it out of the stadium alive. An excellent advertising medium, the biggest player in the world therefore spent the second half of his life as a sales representative for various brands. Without ever scratching the myth, which is no small feat. Because Pele remains Pele, whatever he does. There are pros and anti-Maradonas, idolaters and critics of Cruyff, but none like him unanimously in all quarters. Especially among the players: all the stars who have been compared to him once said that the greatest of them was Edson Arantes do Nascimento. EX