Pele, the legend and myth of the King of football
If football hadn’t been called that, it should have been called Pele. This is the thought of the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado on the occasion of the 80th birthday of the football symbol.
Edson Arantes Do Nascimiento aka Pele was born in Tres Coracoes on 23 October 1940. A champion who has given us dreams and many records, just think of three world championships and 1281 goals scored in his long career.
O ’Rei, as they knew him in Brazil, was the only Brazilian champion to remain playing in his country, despite offers from clubs all over the world, from Real Madrid to the English. And precisely because he was the most Brazilian of Brazilian footballers, his exploits have become myths throughout South America. First in 1958 with Didì and Vavà, the carioca trio of wonders, they took home the Swedish World Cup by beating the hosts in the final, including Nils Liedholm, thus avenging the shame of the lack of qualification for the previous world championship.
After the injuries in the 1962 World Cup in Chile (in any case won by Brazil) and that of 1966 in England, it was in 1970 that Pele consecrated himself as the sacred monster of world football. First by churning out the assist for Jairzinho thus driving away the bad memories of the English world championship where the cariocas were eliminated in the groups with just two points, but above all with his leading goal in the final against Italy, in which he remains floating in the air like this for a long time to make Burgnich say, who marked him: “I thought he was human. I was wrong”.
His legend has been revived in every form of merchandising, from classic pin t-shirts, teacups, and any product that can earn a couple of Reals in Brazil for those with enough imagination. Strangely, it is precisely on the videogame front that Pele has made few appearances. Perhaps because of Atari’s unsuccessful operation with its Pele’s Soccer for the Atari 2600, which must have made the Brazilian champion and his fans turn up not a little.
In any case, there is no soccer game that does not present it in the rosters of the All Star line-ups (those that once were unlocked by winning tournaments). This at least since it was possible to have a minimum personalization of virtual footballers, something to which those like me as a kid had Emlyn Hughes International Soccer as the only reference could make up for with only imagination.
In the end A series of yellow pixels with a face made from four black cubes could easily have been the Pele of the Commodore 64 years, the one in which you ran left to right with the players mixing on each other and the door was an isometric line where it was marked only when the balloon magically stopped in mid-air to re-materialize on the ground.
The torcida of our Commodore was the mononote of the TV mixed with the noise of the joysticks and the screams of the mother who tried to detach us as we pounced on each other in a desperate attempt to cause the error. Obviously the concept of dribbling was abstract, and the header of the imagined Pele did not rise an inch from the ground, but this did not prevent us from seeing O ‘Rei suspended in the air, watching the world from the top of his class, while with the joystick we tried to press that damned red button hoping to score like him.
Best wishes to Pele, 80 years of legend: the story of a one-of-a-kind champion.
We say goodbye to you by leaving you below the link for the download of a rich compilation of games (over 150) containing the best football programs for Commodore 64.
Good fun !!
