The King is Naked
It was obvious. Somebody had to have unreleased pictures of king Pelé. Intimate pictures of the greatest soccer player of all time, pictures of him as a boy. The Herrera brothers, veteran photographers from the city of Santos, did have them. For years they tracked Pelé's path and amassed a fantastic file that only now sees the light, through Trip, as usual. I must say that I had never before seen any of these pictures.
Story: Giuliano Cedroni and Morris
Kachani
Text: Juca Kfouri
Photography: José and Raphael Herrera
Eyes closed, the King relaxes. A rare intimate moment of the genius as he came into this world. A world he conquered by scoring all over it, something he could only have foreseen in his wildest dreams.
The world began to be turned on its head in 1957, when he entered the Brazilian Team. At Physical Education school he finished up a body conceived for sports. According to Paulo Amara, who coached the 1958 and 1962 teams, had Pelé dedicated to athletics, he would have had the 100 m sprint world record. Had he turned to crime, he would have been one of the country's most feared bandits. His only crime was not to have played for Corinthians...
Heads up, always ahead, reaching limits until then unknown to soccer players. Five-time world champion, three of them with Brazil's green and yellow jersey, twice with Santos's white jersey, 1,279 goals, a documented record, twice Libertadores da América cup champion, five-time Brazil Cup champion, eleven-time São Paulo State champion, eleven-time State championship striker, 97 goals in 115 games with the Brazilian Team.
If one can't learn soccer at school, the same doesn't go for driving. This DKW had the rare honor of being the first car driven by His Majesty, who, though admittedly not an Ayrton Senna, likes to say that he was never in a crash. Truth be said, he has a chauffeur... Always the ball first and foremost, even when carrying his firstborn daughter, Kelly Cristina, on his shoulders, or during Carnival, the fact is that there is one thing Pelé never could master: swimming.
SEE THE PICTURES