"Love is more important than what we can take in life. Everything pa ses," a visibly emotional Pele told a capacity crowd at Giants Stadium ahead of his footballing farewell in 1977.Of course, he Terrell Owens Jersey scored. He tended to. A first-half free-kick for the Cosmos against the club of his life, Santos, was the 1,282nd of a 21-year playing career.Pele switched jerseys at halftime to turn out one last time for Santos, the team he represented between 1956 and 1974 as he ascended to heights previously unseen in profe sional football. It was the stuff of fantasy; make-believe made real.The fact he spent large chunks of his career all of those glorious, soaring highs doing just that made it a fitting farewell. Then as now, at the moment of his pa sing, much of it was all about love: the joy experienced, the adoration that was impo sible to resist.Football being referred to synonymously as 'the beautiful game' is a tired cliche these days. But it's a lovely label and one we probably wouldn't have without Pele, the other Brazilian greats of his generation and their Jogo Bonito.MORE:Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento on October 23, 1940 in Minas Gerais, Pele was the son of Celeste Arantes and Dondinho, a footballer of modest renown who played for Fluminese and Atletico Mineiro. One of the stories behind the origins of his famous nickname is cla smates mocking his pronunciation of Dondinho's team-mate Vasco de Sao Lourenco, a goalkeeper affectionately known as Deebo Samuel Jersey Bile."My dream was always to equal my dad," Pele told an eponymous Netflix documentary in 2021. "I thought he was the best player in the world."The family lived in poverty in Baruru, Sao Paulo, where Dondinho concluded his career playing for the local club. When his father was injured and unable to play, he did not receive a wage and Pele got a job shining shoes to help the family.It soon became clear his ambition of surpa sing Dondinho's exploits on the field could be quickly realised and a succe sful trial at Santos in 1956 saw him fast-tracked to the first team, making his debut as a 15-year-old in September of that year.The Pele so familiar from online clips replayed countle s times arrived remarkably fully formed. His initially skinny frame belied explosive power, flawle s balance, strength when controlling the ball in tight spaces and an unerring ability to create and destroy with either foot. He ran roughshod over domestic opponents and the national team came calling.At 17, he was called up to Vicente Feola's squad for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. Despite starting the tournament on the treatment table, something that would become a recurring theme in Pele's World Cup career, he broke into the team and scored the only goal in a 1-0 quarterfinal win over Wales thanks to a beautiful piece of close control, a nimble turn and cool finish. The ebullient youngster represented rebirth for a battered football nation. In the first half of the 20th Century, Uruguay and Argentina were South America's dominant forces. The former won their second World Cup in 1950, defeating Brazil 2-1 in front of an official attendance of 173,850 at Rio's Maracana Stadium. It became known as the Roger Craig Jersey 'Maracanazo', a disaster in sporting terms that prompted a crisis of confidence in Brazilian football.Part of this period of renewal was the switch from a white strip to the Selecao's now iconic yellow shirts with green trim and blue shorts. With Pele as their talisman wearing that kit, they redefined what was po sible in elite football as the finest international team of them all.A hat-trick against France in the semifinal was followed by a brace against the hosts in the Stockholm final. Brazil swaggeringly won both games 5-2 and the golden boy was in tears at fulltime. Poignantly, when he rewatched the footage for the Netflix documentary more than six decades later, the tears flowed again.They didn't particularly seem to be ones of joy. There was a certain anguish to the sobs of an octogenarian in failing health as he observed the flickering images of his brilliant boundle s younger self conquering the world. Perhaps that was the last time it felt more simple than suffocating.A notable trait of Pele's during that retrospective was his need for an enemy, a grudge and a score to settle. "Some journalists said that I was too young to play, that I wasn't experienced enough," he noted tersely regarding his stellar breakthrough involvement in Sweden, as if such a reasonable observation over an adolescent with a couple of years of senior football behind him amounted to some sort of thoughtle s smear.In this regard, it's easy to spot parallels with another subject covered at length by the streaming giant: Michael Jordan. The ease with which the basketball great noted perceived slights and his apparent refusal to forget even the most trivial of those loaded the Last Dance documentary series with rich meme potential.Maybe this is one of the tricks that the greatne s the likes of Pele, Jordan and few others produce requires. It enables them to face down the faintest hint of complacency, to never settle, leading to perpetual succe s but only fleeting contentment. It means the true enjoyment may ultimately reside with those lucky enough to simply watch at the time or replay spellbinding moments over and over today.That was Pele's great gift to the world and he unfurled it at a time when rapid developments in travel, technology, communications and media were making the DeForest Buckner Jersey globe a smaller place. Santos were building a formidable team, and fans in Europe and beyond clamoured to see their star attraction in the flesh.A punishing schedule of money-spinning friendlies were arranged alongside Santos' domestic commitments and Pele thrilled against the likes of Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Barcelona. These matches are responsible for some of the mirth around Pele's career goals record.Out of his phenomenal haul, Santos club historian Odir Cunha told ESPN in 2021 that 448 were scored in friendlies or continental friendly tournaments. But these feats have to be viewed in the context of this time, when the European Cup and Copa Libertadores were in their infancy.Pele's exploits on the road for Santos did much to inspire curiosity in what might happen should the best teams from leading countries meet more frequently. The matches quickly developed a cachet and were generally fiercely contested. It's not hard to trace a line from them to the modern Champions League behemoth.Back in South America, Santos won the third and fourth editions of the Libertadores, ending Uruguay giants Penarol's ambitions of three in a row before prevailing amid the famed hostility of Boca Juniors' Bombonera.Pele Solomon Thomas Jersey scored twice as his team beat Penarol 3-0 in a deciding playoff before coming through some barbaric treatment against Boca in Buenos Aires to produce a goal and an a sist in a 2-1 second-leg win, with Santos prevailing 5-3 on aggregate.In between those succe ses, there was disappo