On the morning of June 11, 1975, a pack of rubbernecking New Yorkers gathers on West 52nd Street. They’re standing outside the venerable “21” club, a former speakeasy turned posh canteen to presidents, plutocrats and Hollywood grandees, drawn there by the steady drone of a police helicopter overhead — and, no doubt, by the conspicuous gaggle of bulky gentlemen in telltale dark suits, sunglasses and coiled wire earpieces monitoring the entrance.
As some onlookers speculate about the identity of the eminence du jour — Frank Sinatra? Jackie O? Elizabeth Taylor? — inside “21,” a mosh pit of 200-plus reporters, cameramen and photographers waits impatiently for something to happen. They’re all crammed into an upstairs space called the Hunt Room, an homage to the massive elk and antelope antlers that are stuffed and mounted on the oak-paneled walls. All they know is that a news conference will be starting at 11 a.m.
Except it doesn’t. The mystery guest is, so far, 20 minutes late. But then Pele is always late. The man, who is all whirring feet and pumping legs on a soccer field, downshifts to “leisurely” when off it.
His job on this day is simply to show up and ceremoniously sign his name to a $4.75 million, three-year contract with the Warner Communications-owned soccer club, the New York Cosmos, that will make him the highest-paid player in the firmament. Anyone else in this enviable position might experience an adrenaline rush and pick up the pace — anyone but the mellow 34-year-old Brazilian.
By 11:35, Warner executives, cognizant of the toxic mood building in the Hunt Room, try to calm things down by assigning a PR guy to announce that “Pele is just on his way now” while whispering among themselves: “Where the hell is he?”
As it happens, he is still in his hotel room huddling with lawyers, who’ve found a last-minute snag in the contract. Pele, arguably the greatest soccer player in the sport’s history, doesn’t want to be identified as a soccer player, period: it’s the only way to avoid messy tax issues with the Brazilian government. Lest they risk losing him, Warner has to resolve the problem, and quickly, so it comes up with an ingenious plan: Atlantic Records, a Warner subsidiary, would list Pele as a “recording artist” for the label. (It isn’t that much of a stretch: Pele, an avid guitarist, already has two solid-gold hits in Brazil to his credit, and his friend Sergio Mendes had recently asked him to do a record together.)
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FRIDAY, DEC. 30
• Getafe vs. Mallorca (11 a.m. ET)
• Celta Vigo vs. Sevilla (1 p.m. ET)
• Valladolid vs. Real Madrid (3:20 p.m. ET)
SATURDAY, DEC. 31
• Barcelona vs. Espanyol (8 a.m. ET)
• Villarreal vs. Valencia (10 a.m. ET)
At long last, Pele appeared, climbing the half-dozen concrete steps up to the field. The expression on his face, normally fixed in a radiant smile, was one of utter bemusement. Slowly he navigated the pitted terrain. Maracana, it wasn’t. “Welcome to your new home,” Bradley yelled out to him.
When the players started to applaud, Pele put up his hand in a gesture that said stop. “Please, no, I am one of you,” he told them in a voice commanding enough to indicate he wasn’t just offering up a piece of gee-whiz humility. “We must be a team together.” But his fellow players, many of whom had grown up with Pele posters on their bedroom walls, were clearly in awe. Once the scrimmage got underway and Pele began to orchestrate the action, they suddenly developed two left feet. Passes went astray, shots were shanked, tackles mistimed.
Then it happened. Pele was done trying to assimilate; he surged into the penalty area awaiting a cross-field pass from the left flank. But instead of the ball being served just in front of him so he could meet it with his head, it was whipped in behind him, shoulder high. He leaned back gracefully for a second or two, as if settling into a chaise longue on some crystalline Rio beach. Then, with his left leg floating up and his back parallel to the ground, Pele’s right leg catapulted him into the air. He scissor-kicked sharply, caught the ball with his right instep, and drove it over his laid-out-flat body into the net.
“What just happened?” asked goalkeeper Kirk Kuykendahl, slack-jawed and frozen in place as if in a wax museum.
What just happened? Pele had suddenly reached back across the years to pull a face-melting moment of jogo bonito out of his memory bank. “Not a bad start to your Cosmos career,” I said to him as we headed to the sleek black Cadillac waiting to ferry us back to Manhattan. “The bicycle kick is not easy” Pele responded. “Today I just want to do something to make the people happy.”
