I imagine that Pelé levitated: that's the only way I can explain his ease in avoiding opponents without anyone stopping him: they were looking for him on the ground, not in the sky. And that's the only way I can explain his leap for the first goal in the final against Italy in Mexico 70. The cameras have not yet discovered if it was that or if he was on skates.
O'Rei of soccer
I imagine Pelé's elegant dribble like life on other planets: it exists without needing explanation. And I also imagine his mowing power: the videos -increasingly more- that exist on YouTube force us to expand the words in dictionaries. Before O'Rei, the good ones didn't choose a shirt, there was no monarchy, and no one knew how to call the best of all. Then, they all wanted to be called Pelé.
I imagine Pelé making cameramen sad who could never capture his more than 1000 goals and mobilizing inventors to their laboratories to find an HD that only arrived 50 years after his three World Cups.
I imagine Sweden 58 like in his biographical movie on Netflix: a teenager who saw his father cry in front of the television eight years before -the Maracanazo- and swore to avenge him, playing soccer. Revenge -like love- changes the world. His father, João Ramos do Nascimento "Dondinho", the man who taught him to kick with mangoes, is the second responsible for his scandalous figures: 14 matches in World Cups, 12 goals, 9 assists. His mother, the first one: the first kick was in her belly.
O'Rei of soccer
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I imagine a diabolical Santos: the historical records of El Comercio for their first arrival in Lima, to play friendly matches with 'U' and Alianza in the seventies, reveal the shocked faces of Limeños. There is one image that is especially didactic: Cachito Ramírez and Cholo Sotil take a photo next to Pelé, as if someone had arrived to distribute miracles instead of a goal-scoring footballer.
I imagine Pelé watching how soccer fans will mourn him, more inclined towards modernity and computers than black and white images and that river of tears that will cross Tres Coracoes and reach all the oceans, all the coasts, all the ports.
And now that Pelé has died at 82, I imagine him impossible. Or as Menotti responded, quoted by Valdano in "El Miedo Escénico y otras Hierbas": "How do you mark Pelé? With chalk".
Rest in peace, O'Rei.
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