As decolonisation movements swept across Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pelé was invited by newly independent countries to play in prestigious friendlies with his club Santos FC and the Brazilian national team. In his autobiography, Pelé said that the following decades and subsequent repeated trips to the African continent, “changed not only my view of the world, but also the way the world perceived me”. In 1965, the 24-year-old arrived while film director Gillo Pontecorvo was shooting The Battle of Algiers, then President Ahmed Ben Bella scheduled two friendly matches for the occasion – one in Oran on 15 June, and one in the capital, Algiers, four days later. However, on 17 June, Ben Bella’s own Minister of Defence Houari Boumediene carried out a coup d’etat, historians believe that Boumediene may have used the commotion around Pele’s arrival as a distraction in order to carry out his coup. Pele’s trips to Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have also become shrouded in lore. During both trips, he was apocryphally credited with instilling peace in the country that was hosting him. The Nigerian Civil War raged from 1967-1970, yet when Pele visited in 1969 to play in an exhibition match versus the Nigerian national team, there were claims that a 48-hour ceasefire had been declared. His apocryphal prediction in the mid-1970s that an African team would win the tournament before the year 2000 is always a hot topic before each tournament kicks off. It is fitting that his final social media post included a few words of congratulations for Morocco’s historic World Cup run in Qatar.
SOURCE: BBC
