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Comment by boomboomsubban | Hacker News Reader

It still astounds me that he managed to get as famous as he did almost exclusively from his World Cup performances, as basically nobody outside of Brazil could have seen his club games. Sure he was amazing, but most of the world got to see/hear him play well under 20 games lifetime. Yet somehow seemingly everybody knew who he was for decades

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The Brazilian team he played in, Santos, was not really a great team when Pele arrived... but once Pele showed up, that team became a win-everything team, 23 titles including two world championships, for over 10 years. Some claim Pele's Santos was one of the greatest teams to ever have played football. Wherever they went, it was a full house, and they did tour outside Brazil, but not very often, sure. In any case, Pele's fame is in no way exagerated. He won 3 world cups, something nearly unheard of even after all these years, won every championship Santos tried (his teammates were also amazing [1], of course - but Pele's prominency has never been questioned by anyone, specially his teammates) for a really long time... and he just made the game beautiful with every touch... watching his works in situations that did not even end up with a goal has always been as popular as watching his most amazing goals as I grew up.

[1] Pele & the immortal Santos of 1960-1969 https://imortaisdofutebol.com/esquadrao-imortal-santos-1960-...

> something nearly unheard of even after all these years

It's not "nearly" unheard of, it's completely unheard of apart from in Pelé's case. He remains the only player ever to have won three world cups.

> Wherever they went, it was a full house

They lost against many European teams.

And they won what, only 2 or 3 libertadores in a decade?

Real Madrid won 5 of the last 8 Uefa Champions Leagues for comparison.

You should look up how the tournaments were organized back then, you can't compare to things today.

In many Libertadores editions in the 1960s countries only had one spot. In some years Brazil as a whole was denied a spot: 1966, 69 and 70 Libertadores didn't have any Brazilian teams whatsoever (and in both 1966 and 69 Santos would have played).

Even the national championship wasn't "national", as there was only one spot per state, so states with great teams (like the state of São Paulo) would only have one team competing (either Santos or Palmeiras back then).

So Santos only had the chance to play in 4 Libertadores, out of 7 that Brazil was allowed, and won 2. That's a pretty good record. If there were as many spots as there is in UEFA Champions League today history might've been very different. Santos might've won more, or none.

If you applied the same standard to Real Madrid today you'd have a different outlook, as they were only Spanish champions 3 times in that period, so mainly ineligible for most of the CLs they won, and only once were they the Spanish champions before a CL win.

2 out of 7 is in my book, nothing extraordinary that motivates such a hype around that Santos team.

They didn't always dominate in Brazil, they didn't on international stage either.

They are probably the best team of that era along Real Madrid but this narrative of them being much better than the opposition is imho weak.

What about Messi's Barcelona? And Manchester City in the past 5 years, by your estimation, could not be considered better than their opposition due to having won no Champions League? I think your standards fail the smell test, but more importantly it is anachronical to suggest the Libertadores was the foremost soccer tourney at the time.

I don't really think comparing across eras is a good thing, but to your last point about CL organization - Madrid did win the first 5 CLs when they were organized in a manner that allowed only the champions from each country to enter.

After the first two World Cups his fame also brought fame to his club, Santos, that had a spectacular team also. They did world tours to showcase their talent. I believe most of his fame around the world came from these tours.

Here is a recollection of such tours, focusing on a debatable feat of stopping a civil war:

https://www.goal.com/en/amp/news/did-pele-and-santos-really-...

He also played in NYC for a few years at the end of his playing career for the NY Cosmos.

Also at the peak NASL, crowds were often 50,000 or more particularly when he was playing…not quite the Maracanã but soccer was more popular in the US than the popular sports narrative tends to report.

Of course only a few years after Pele, I watched the Diplomats play home games in a high school stadium.

I assume that most of the people watching him play there did not watch him play in the World Cup, as the USA missed every World Cup between 1950 and 1990.

For perspective there was only one team from North America in 1954, only one from Asia, and none from Africa.

In 1986, there were two teams from North America but one was Mexico as hosts. This is versus 14 spots for Europe in 1986.

Santos toured Europe many many times, playing the best European teams of that time.

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