Pele the "The King of Football" (O Redo Futebol)

 
Full name            :   Edison Arantes do Nascimento
Date of birth       :   23 October 1940 (1940-10-23) (age 69)
Place of birth      :   Três Corações, Brazil
Height                 :   1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Playing position  :   Attacking midfielder/Forward


Youth career
1952–1956     Bauru AC


Senior career*
Years               Team             Apps†     (Gls)†
1956–1974      Santos            1120       (1087)
1975–1977      NY Cosmos    64           (37)
Total                                      1184       (1124)

National team
1957–1971     Brazil             92           (77)

* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only.
† Appearance

Pelé is a Portuguese name; the first family name is Arantes and the second is do Nascimento.
Edison Arantes do Nascimento KBE (born 23 October 1940), best known by his nickname Pelé (Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation: [peˈlɛ], usual English pronunciation: /ˈpɛleɪ/) is a retired Brazilian football player. He is widely regarded by polls among football experts, former players and fans as the greatest footballer of all time. In his career he scored 760 official goals, 541 in league championships, making him the top scorer of all time. In total he scored 1281 goals in 1363 games.

Early years

Pelé was born in Três Corações, Brazil, the son of a Fluminense footballer Dondinho (born João Ramos do Nascimento) and Maria Celeste Arantes. He was named after the American inventor Thomas Edison,however his parents decided to remove the 'i' and call him 'Edson', but there was a mistake on the birth certificate, leading many documents to show his name as 'Edison', not 'Edson', as he is actually called.He was originally nicknamed Dico by his family. He did not receive the nickname "Pelé" until his school days, when it is claimed he was given it because of his pronunciation of the name of his favorite player, local Vasco da Gama goalkeeper Bilé, which he misspoke but the more he complained the more it stuck. In his autobiography, Pelé stated he had no idea what the name means, nor did his old friends. Apart from the assertion that the name is derived from that of Bilé, and that it is Hebrew for miracle, the word has no known meaning in Portuguese.

Pelé grew up in poverty in Bauru, São Paulo. He earned extra money by working in tea shops as a servant. Taught to play by his coach, he could not afford a proper football and usually played with either a sock stuffed with newspaper, tied with a string or a grapefruit.

Family

On 21 February 1966, Pelé married Rosemeri dos Reis Cholby. He has two daughters Kelly Cristina (13 January 1967) and Jennifer (1978) as well as a son Edson ("Edinho" – little Edson, 27 August 1970). The couple divorced in 1978.

Since April 1994 Pelé has been married to psychologist and gospel singer Assíria Lemos Seixas, who gave birth on 28 September 1996 to twins Joshua and Celeste through fertility treatments.

 Goalscoring and appearance record

Pelé's goalscoring record is often reported as being 1280 goals in 1363 games. This figure includes goals scored by Pelé in non-competitive club matches, for example, international tours Pelé completed with Santos and the New York Cosmos, and a few games Pelé played in for armed forces teams during his national service in Brazil.

The tables below record every goal Pelé scored in major club competitions for Santos and the New York Cosmos. During much of Pelé's playing career in Brazil there was no national league championship. From 1960 onwards the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) were required to provide meritocratic entrants for the then-new Copa Libertadores, a South American international club competition broadly equivalent to the European Cup. To enable them to do this, the CBF organised two national competitions: the Taça de Prata and Taça Brasil. A national league championship, the Campeonato Brasileiro, was first played in 1971, alongside traditional state and interstate competitions such as the Campeonato Paulista and the Torneio Rio-São Paulo.

The number of league goals scored by Pelé is listed as 589 in 605 games. This number is the sum of the goals scored by Pelé in domestic league-based competitions: the Campeonato Paulista (SPS), Torneio Rio-São Paulo (RSPS), Taça de Prata and Campeonato Brasileiro. The Taça Brasil was a national competition organised on a knockout basis.

At the age of fifteen, he joined the Santos FC junior team.