Pele and the making of an American idol

PELÉ IS IN NEW YORK, THE CITY he called home in the late 1970s, but what strikes you most is that he could be anywhere. So universal is his appeal that the men and women queueing for a picture and an autograph in Manhattan look and act no differently than those who fawn over him in Lisbon, Milan, Tokyo and London.

As soon as they arrive at the front of the queue, Pelé smiles and his gaze fixes on them, as if they were the only people in the room. A handshake, a cuddle, a photograph, a few words, it’s all seamless, efficient and – you cannot help but feel – genuine.

Because part of the reason Pelé is Pelé is his ability to connect to individuals. It is a quality advertisers and marketing men crave and, not coincidentally, my mind travels back a few years to when I had a one-on-one interview with David Beckham. He stood up the second I walked into the room (unlike his handlers), shook my hand and made me feel as if the sole purpose of his day was to hear what I had to say (never mind that, obviously, I was there to interview him and not the other way around).

Beckham and Pelé may be easy targets for acid-tongued pundits to lampoon, but that is the price you pay for overexposure. (In my memories, I can only picture Pelé in two ways: clad in a Brazil shirt or wearing that blazer with the giant MasterCard logo that he seemingly never removed for much of the 1980s and 1990s.) When you actually sit down with them, it is a different story.

Pelé is in New York promoting GolTV, a football-only television channel that has enjoyed exponential growth in the US since its launch four years ago. GolTV’s success is evidence of the fact that, while football may lag well behind other sports in America, there is a very real (and vocal) hard core of fans in the US. Beckham’s move to Los Angeles Galaxy this summer is, of course, an attempt to cross over to the casual fan, much like Pelé’s signing with New York Cosmos in the 1970s.

It is the most obvious question for Pelé: how is Beckham’s experience going to differ from his own? “Beckham is lucky, we did the hard part for him back in the day,” Pelé said. “I mean, when I joined the Cosmos, we had six to eight kids from college, we played in Randalls Island stadium [a tiny, dilapidated ground on an island in New York’s East River], we were starting from scratch in America. I remember our very first game, we lost 3-1 to San Jose and I thought to myself, ‘My God, what have I done? What kind of a place is this?’ ” Indeed, the North American Soccer League (NASL) was a bit of a Wild West free-for-all, with wildly varying standards in terms of pitches, grounds and, most of all, organisation and financial stability. Not coincidentally, seemingly every year, clubs went bust or moved cities or both. Major League Soccer (MLS), which Beckham will be joining, is, on the other hand, a tightly controlled and professionally run organisation whose mantra since its inception in 1996 has been all about slow, steady growth. And, unlike the old NASL, which freely imported overseas players, MLS has made developing local talent a priority.

“In my day we had lots of big stars, from [Johan] Cruyff to [Franz] Beckenbauer, to [Johan] Neeskens to [Giorgio] Chinaglia and Rodney Marsh,” Pelé said. “But they were mostly foreigners. It was like a big exhibition, we did not have the local connection. But now the US game is stronger at grassroots level. They showed it in the World Cup. In 2002 they deserved to beat Germany but the referee made a mistake.

“If they had, I think they could have played Brazil in the final. And the same in 2006, they were very unlucky against Ghana. In that sense, Beckham will have an easier time, because the organisation is there, the players are there, he only needs to take them that last step. But, with us, we had to do everything from zero.”

The real concern perhaps has more to do with what is expected of Beckham and the gulf between legitimate US football supporters and the crossover fans to whom he is meant to appeal. The former are knowledgeable and realise that, with due respect, any comparison between Beckham and Pelé in footballing terms is absurd. Pelé was the greatest player in the world, Beckham, arguably, was never even the greatest player in England. And, just like fans on this side of the Atlantic, they view the hype that surrounds him with a healthy dose of suspicion.

The casual American fan with little interest in the sport has definitely heard of Beckham and, precisely because he may be the only footballer of whom he is aware, expects him to be the Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan of the sport – which, of course, he isn’t.

What’s more, even when Beckham plays well, apart from the odd free kick, his contribution is not exactly highlight reel stuff, which is what many US fans crave. Pelé said: “Beckham is a midfielder, it’s more difficult for someone who does not know football to appreciate what he does on the pitch. He is not a Cruyff, a Ronaldinho or a [Zinédine] Zidane.”

And that is the fear. Casual fans may switch over and watch a Galaxy match, but unless Beckham scores a spectacular hat-trick in the first half (as some will, no doubt, expect him to do in every game), will they stick around for 90 minutes?

And, meanwhile, will the hard-core supporters be turned off by the hype? “Good questions, good questions,” Pelé said. “I don’t know. But I know that it’s time for people in this country to talk more about football. And if Beckham coming means they will talk more about football, it will be good. Good for football and good for America.”