Commentary: Pele, the cultural icon who put passion at the heart of football

PARIS: Pele, football's first global superstar, has died at the age of 82. To many fans, the Brazilian will be remembered as the best to have ever played the game.

For others it goes further: He was the symbol of football played with passion, gusto and a smile. Indeed, he helped to forge an image of the game, which even today lots of people continue to crave.

Pele wasn’t just a great player and a wonderful ambassador for the world’s favorite game; he was a cultural icon. Indeed, he remains the face of a purity in football that existed long before big money and global geopolitics infiltrated the game.

It is testament to his legend that everyone from English 1966 World Cup winner Bobby Charlton and current French superstar Kylian Mbappe to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – the former and incoming president of Brazil – and former United States president Barack Obama have led tributes to him.

Pele was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in Sao Paolo state, Brazil in 1940. His early years were the same as many football players who preceded him and countless who then followed and were inspired by him: Born into poverty, introduced to the game by a family member, later becoming obsessed by a sport that taught him about life and gave him opportunities.

Youth team football came first, in 1953, when he signed for his local club, Bauru. But it was his first professional club, Santos, that propelled Pele toward stardom. Having moved there in 1956, he played 636 matches and scored 618 goals before leaving in 1974. Not just the beating heart of the team, Pele was also an immense, one-club loyalist.

Long before the feats of modern-day stars Cristiano Ronaldo or Erling Haaland, Pele blazed a goal-scoring trail that marked him out as being