RIP. Not a soccer fan, but I do respect greatness.... I saw the Cosmos at Nassau Coliseum when I was a little kid In his honor I may watch "Victory" tonight..... and pretend Rocky could be a good goal keeper
100 years from now when basketball fans have to ask who LeBron James was and football fans will have to look up Tom Brady, soccer fans will still know Pele.
Maybe in Europe and other countries but not here in North America. I have a class full of students who play soccer and were going World Cup Crazy a few weeks ago, and I know because I brought it up that they had no clue who Pele was. Football and “NBA” basketball are more American sports than anything else. I do not disagree with you about the bot knowing Brady or LeBron, but that is more a knock on the average American, they will not remember Pele, Rinaldo or Messi either. We do a project on Athletes and social change in the spring though. Starts with Jackie Robinson, and we go into Janet Guthrie and Jim Abbott. In the past I have students do them on Ali, Wilma Rudolph, Jesse Owens, Billie Jean King, Roberto Clemente to name a few. I do recall a student 2 or years ago one did to Pele. I really do not care for soccer, but Pele was basically the only player everyone did know growing up in the 70’s/80’s. RIP
Only 2 athletes have ever reached his level of global notoriety. The other was Muhammad Ali. Both did it before the birth of the internet and social media.
