It is entirely predictable that any eulogy for Edson Arantes do Nascimento, thankfully known as Pele, will be illuminated by shafts of sunlit words reflecting that even in demise he inspires memories of inspirational brilliance. Brazilian football coming into our vision for the first time at the end of the 50s was like having lyrical poetry read to you as a contrast to the plodding prose of our parochial game. Unsurprisingly the rest of the world felt the fluency of the yellow shirts was synchronised with the samba beat, and from their gyrations emerged a teenage prodigy who was to become the metronomic conductor, linking the incessant beat of flowing, imaginative football to a mesmerised global audience.

This acceptance of their universal appeal was perfectly exemplified in Seville on 18 June 1982 when they played Scotland in the World Cup. Outlclassed eventually, after the Davy Narey ‘toe-poke’, and losing 4-1, I witnessed Scots celebrating with Brazilians in the city afterwards like they had been part of a mass baptism that had awakened them to the joys of life through the way football could be played at an exalted level. Against no other nation would such a heavy defeat have been so transformed into a life-affirming experience.

Of course, Pele was not on the pitch that day. He was in the stands. But his inheritance was stamped all over his successors. I heard their elegant, chain-smoking captain Socrates in a press-conference in the hills above the city, mention the great man’s name over and over again as he claimed his present side was skilled enough to reclaim Pele’s previously-led dominance of the world after the abject failures of ‘74 and ’78. That they were to fail in ’82 as well - brilliant and reminiscent of Pele’s 1970 side though they were - was down to arrogance and showboating against the Italians in a single game.

They were missing again that magnificent physical specimen in Pele, who strode the pitch like a lord his domain, nursing his record cornucopia of goals like they were offspring he had littered around the world. The media acclaim may have sounded like he was making the other talents in his teams look merely like a corps de ballet, but people throughout the world loved to rhyme off all the names, Pele, Jairzinho, Garrincha, Carlos Alberto, Gerson, Tostao, like they were confirming their knowledge of the apostles in an adopted catechism.

Such a devotion to the South Americans was remarkable because it is not as though we were drenched in television pictures in the ‘60s and ‘70s. But even on a meagre diet we became hooked – particularly on the black and white pictures from the 1958 World Cup finals in Sweden to alert us to the outrageous talent of 17 year-old Pele becoming the youngest player ever to receive a winner’s medal in that global competition – in that final, one of his two goals, flicking the ball over a defender’s head before volleying it into the net, has been recorded as one of the best goals in World Cup history.

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Yet, all the Brazilians were distant at that time from many of us in the media. Even to someone in my business they seemed from another planet with language a huge barrier One man changed that for me. Peter Pullen, was the public relations man for the Brazilian Embassy in London and because of the number of occasions we met at press-conferences, and his liking for a malt whisky I occasionally provided, with his impeccable English he became my conduit for information from the Brazil camp in all the World Cup Finals games we played against that super-power, from 1974 through to 1998.

The relationship began though in 1966 when it was announced that Brazil would play Scotland as a warm-up game on their way to the Finals in England and we chatted at a Brazil training session. As a fledgling broadcaster then, assigned to a humble radio role, but about to see Pele in the flesh for the first time, I felt like a kid who had been invited into Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory to help myself. On that 25 June day 1966, the 75,000 who attended created an odd atmosphere. It was a friendly of course, but Scotland had fielded a strong side, captained by John Greig. I felt the crowd were expecting some kind of exhibition from the Brazilians and was unsure how Scotland would respond, although hoping they would rise above guinea-pig status, as the week before they had been

beaten by other World Cup contenders Portugal 1-0. Like many I wanted the full Monty from the South Americans. Why come all this way to Hampden and not see their majestic, swirling football, their trickery, their astonishing changes of pace from apparent nonchalance to electrifying penetration?

So when Stevie Chalmers of Celtic scored for Scotland, from an immaculate pass by Jim Baxter of Rangers, in exactly one minute, I felt this odd sensation of quelling my own instinctive reaction of joy and thinking for the first time of applying that well-worn cliché, ‘That wasn’t in the script’ – although much used in later career. Nor was the rest of the game as expected. Even though Brazil equalised fifteen minutes later from a man I had never heard of before, Servillo, and not the great man himself, it all portended something more anti-climactic. Was I expecting too much from a team about to embark on foreign soil to defend their world title? Pele, throughout, was reserved, almost aloof, mechanical, cautious, since he was fully conscious that a little ginger-haired Scot called Billy Bremner was attached to him with the conviction of a man padlocked to palace railings and with scant respect for reputation. So, into the spotlight stepped Jim Baxter, who although with his shock of dark hair, pallor and lack of reverence for the opposition, reminding us of his roots among the coalfields of Fife , performed as if he had learned the trade on the sands of Copacabana. In the post-match interview Pele singled him out for praise.

I was disappointed though, I had not witnessed the real Pele, the Pele of grandeur. For me it was like if I had gone to see my other idol Frank Sinatra singing in Vegas only to find he had laryngitis.

Years after that match, when I met up with Peter Pullen again in 1974 in the World Cup in Germany he gave me a sense of what had dramatically changed in their footballing culture since Pele’s retiral. He took me back to when we had first met in 1966, in these very words, spoken with great feeling.

‘In England in ’66, we were chopped down. They really had it in for us. I’ve never seen so many wild tackles. Remember the Portugal game? They might speak the same lingo as us, but not on the football field. They’re European. They almost killed Pele. He had to be carried off and you should have seen his legs at the end; covered in hacks and bruises. We didn’t get past the first stage in ’66 and we vowed then that, if ever we came back to Europe, we’d better be prepared.’

He was correct. The muscular and Europeanised 1974 Brazilian side without Pele had left spontaneity and creativity back in the Maracana, and they failed.

However, immediately after 1966, they decanted any doubts about waning powers by winning the World Cup in Mexico four years later in 1970. These pictures were in colour for the first time. Under Carlo Alberto’s captaincy . in the glorious Mexican sun, we would watch perhaps the most incandescent World Cup of all time. The yellow-shirts dominated our screens, with a constellatory brilliance that many believe has never been equalled. You could argue that the 4-1 win for Brazil against Italy in the final, was the apotheosis of Pele’s influence on the world game. Can we ever forget his opening goal, that enormous leap and header, and, when the ball hits the net, the aerial passionate embrace with Jairzinho? For me, as iconography goes, that moment still-framed is up there with Rodin’s ‘ The Kiss’.

I regret I never got to interview him despite all my efforts. Even with Peter Pullen’s assistance it was never easy to get close to Pele given that the world was always knocking on his door, demanding some pearl of wisdom. There was little wonder in that because this was the man who had created a record by uniquely winning three FIFA World Cups, being leading goal-scorer for his country with 77 goals in 92 games, named Athlete of the Century by the IOC, and scored 643 goals in 659 games for his club Santos. Statistics that, even now, catch my breath.

A basic law of physics is that nature abhors a vaccum. That apparently cannot apply to football. For there is nobody in the universe who could conceivably fill the sacred space that Pele has now sadly vacated.