Soccer icon passes away at 82
Pelé, who won a record three World Cups for Brazil and was considered by many to be the greatest soccer player ever, died Thursday. He was 82.
According to the Associated Press, Pele had been hospitalized for the last month while battling multiple health issues.
As the world mourns the passing of footballing legend Pelé, there is a little-known fact that could have changed the destiny of Italian football as we know it.
Pelé is widely known as one of the greatest footballers in the history of the sport alongside legends such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Diego Maradona.
Pelé is indisputably the greatest footballer ever to have not donned a jersey of a European club. However, what few know is that Pele was under contract with an Italian club, for, wait for it, a day!
With every European club rolling out the red carpet for Pelé in the 1950s and ’60s, it was oil tycoon and then Inter Milan President Angelo Moratti who was the only one to successfully convince the Brazilian superstar to leave his native country and pursue the riches and notoriety of European football.
Moratti’s Inter Milan club was in fierce competition with local rival AC Milan and Turin nemesis Juventus throughout the 1950s. With the club in a Scudetto (championship trophy) drought for several seasons and Pelé driving football fans across the world crazy following his dominating performance in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, Moratti, determined to lure Pele to the Italian peninsula, went all-out on a recruiting campaign to convince the then-eighteen-year-old Brazilian star.
The Milanese tycoon had successfully pulled off the impossible, accomplishing what no other club in Europe was able to. Pelé, the world’s greatest footballer, was officially a member of the Nerazzurri (Inter Milan’s colors and team nickname).
Joy and jubilation in Milan did not last long, however. With the ink barely dry on Pelé’s contract with the Milanese giants, Brazilian fans were irate. Loyal supporters of Pelé’s hometown club Santos, took to the streets of Brazil to protest. The protests turned alarming when threats and insults began to land on Moratti’s desk at the Inter Milan headquarters. The Moratti’s quickly realized that their vision of Pelé in an Italian club uniform would be impossible and would have detrimental long-term effects on relations between Italian and Brazilian clubs.
The story ended with the Moratti’s releasing Pelé from his newly inked Italian contract, the player returning to his hometown club of Santos, and the rest is history. Pelé would go on to have one of the most legendary careers in the history of football, winning multiple World Cups and dominating pitches across the world for Santos, and later in his career, the New York Cosmos.
Italians were left wondering “what if?”.
We will never know how the history of Italian football would have changed had Pelé stayed in Milan.
RIP to a true football legend.
Source: AP News