Episode 2526: Rest in Peace, King of Football

Yesterday, at 3.27pm local time, a statement from a Sao Paulo hospital confirmed the death of the great Pele, “our dear King of Football”.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known as Pele to the footballing world, is considered one of the greatest players to ever play the game. Aside from scoring over 1200 career goals, he also was seen as one of the great innovators in football, with many tricks and skill moves we commonly see today being attributed to his creation. As Erling Haaland put it so succinctly, “Everything you see any player doing, Pelé did it first. RIP”.

In tribute to the great man, we’ve chosen to revisit a chat between Ken & Tim Vickery from last year about the Pele documentary on Netflix, discussing the life of Brazil’s finest player and where he fits into the conversation of the all time greats.

Click the large image at the top of the page to play the show. Monday’s shows are free to all and to listen to our programming throughout the rest of the week, join the Second Captains World Service. It’s independent, commercial-free and member-led with feature interviews, breaking news, Ken’s Football Show, Richie Sadlier’s Player’s Chair, The Politics Podcast, The “I’ll Tell You Who Wrote It” Book Club and lots of added extras. You’ll also be supporting the development of our longer-form work, like our recent international series  ‘Where Is George Gibney?’.

Here’s Pelé at Dalymount in 1972 for Santos FC. Beautiful footage not only of the man himself but the Dublin crowd that day. We used quite a few of the shots in our opening sequence for our tv show on @RTE2 back in the day. See it below…?? pic.twitter.com/HeuOihUH9R

— Second Captains (@SecondCaptains) December 29, 2022