Hello and welcome to Soccer 101. My name is Daryl Grove and sitting across the table from me, it's Taylor Rockwell. Hello. Hello, my friend. And today we are here to talk, Pellet. I've heard of him. I imagine you have because he's one of the best players of all time, unless you're Diego Maradonna, in which case you don't read him.

But what is it about him that makes him so special? Why do people who maybe don't know much else about soccer or really anything about soccer, they know that name Pele? Yeah, my wife's father knows the name Pele. Probably couldn't name another soccer player. That sounds about right.

And so while other players from the 50s, 60s, 70s have maybe faded from our memories a little bit,

Pele kind of stays front and center in our collective soccer minds. I mean, you said that. I've got a VAVAR poster. I'm sure you do. So we've done the research. We've watched the footage. We're now here to determine why exactly he is so special why he stays in our minds to this day

okay so we're just going to trade back and forth i think so reasons why we think pelay basically

why is pelais such a big deal yes pretty much would you like i feel like you've done more research

than me i'm looking across the table your notes there are more bullet points than i have bullet points

there's a lot of bullet points so why don't you go first so that you can get some of yours done? Sure. I'll start off

with, and I think what we're striving to do here is maybe not tell like the history of Pele. We're not no, no, no, no. We're not going to say he was born here and then he had this for breakfast. No, we're not. And I'll also say this will come up a lot in mind, but a quick disclaimer is that like we're also, I at least was trying to kind of remove some of the mythology from Pele.

Because with him, there is so much storytelling that it's difficult at times to figure out what exactly is true, what exactly is myth.

Some of the storytelling comes from Pele himself.

It does. But one of the things he definitely did not make up was that Brazil won the 1958 World Cup, and that's where I want to start. Because it was the first time they ever won

the World Cup. And that's a very important thing to remember. There's a great quote from author

Armando Negera, who said, the first championship is like a first kiss. One never forgets. He also

added, there's a certain aura, a certain mysticism about that first victory.

And I think that is very true, and that pertains to Pele as well.

His first World Cup as a 17-year-old to become this front and center story of this

youngster who came through, didn't start, ended up starting, ended up scoring, ended up

becoming this pivotal figure

that he played such an important role in Brazil winning their first World Cup, I think is why

he stays, or at least initially is connected to the brilliance of Brazil.

And then I kind of joked about Vava at the top of this show.

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