In My Sporting Hero, a new podcast series from Nutmeg, footballers talk about the athletes who inspire them. Sometimes those sportsmen and women are also footballers. Sometimes not. You can listen to the audio on this post, on the podcast app of your choice (just search for ‘My Sporting Hero’) or enjoy the written version below.
Our next guest is Pat Nevin. As a player, Pat was a worthy member of the noble pantheon of dazzling, diminutive wingers which Scotland has produced over the decades. In his first season at Chelsea he helped the Blues to the Second Division title, and continued to impress in England’s top tier playing alongside talents such as Kerry Dixon, Nigel Spackman and David Speedie. He was an FA Cup runner-up at Everton and finished his career at Motherwell. A cultured and articulate man, Pat has been a much sought-after media analyst in his post-playing years.
Pat’s sporting hero is Edson Arantes do Nascimento – Pele. The late Brazil and Santos legend was a three-time World Cup winner, humanitarian and all-round good guy. The greatest of all time? Probably, according to Pat.
My first awareness of Pele was during the 1970 World Cup. For a lot of people my age, that was the first World Cup we got to see in colour. I’d been watching Celtic at that time, and they were in the middle of nine in a row. They had just had the Lisbon Lions, and then there came the likes of Kenny Dalglish, Danny McGrain, David Hay (my personal favourite), Lou Macari and George Connelly. Those Celtic teams and that Brazil team played attack-minded, positive, exciting football, and I just thought that was normality – I didn’t realise I was being spoiled rotten!
I was only aged seven at the time of the 1970 World Cup, but I can remember being gob-smacked watching Jairzinho and Tostão. I wanted to watch football like that and I wanted to play football like that.
Pele was in the middle of it all. He hadn’t ever moved away from Santos, so you only got a limited number of chances to see him, but we had been told he was the greatest player in the world. Of course, he had been in World Cups before that, but this seemed the perfect moment for him.
There’s a brilliant video on YouTube which shows you all the great things that Maradona has done and all the great things that Ronaldo has done and all the great things that all of the great players have done. And then it shows you Pele doing it before them; it is absolutely extraordinary. And he was doing it on terrible pitches and he was getting lumps kicked out of him.
In Scotland, our second team is most certainly Brazil, because we have a love of the creative. There was the colour of the strip, too; the different type of cameras they used back then meant that there was a different vibrancy to it, and, of course, the sun was shining all the time. You also had the goodies versus the baddies, with the baddies being the Italians in the final. I love Italian football, but to some degree they were cynical and defensive and I can’t remember anyone not wanting Brazil to win. People’s support for Brazil continued after that World Cup, even though you knew that 1970 was almost certainly the pinnacle.
Pele’s footballing highlights at the 1970 World Cup include the famous dummy which fooled the Uruguay goalkeeper – it was the most outrageous dummy in history. There was the header against England from which Gordon Banks made his famous save. Pele’s reaction to that was to congratulate Banks. Only a good person who considers the beauty of the game and has a love of the sport would have done that. Then there was the lay-off for the fourth goal in the final, scored by the captain Carlos Alberto. The build-up is phenomenal, and then it comes to Pele. He doesn’t just pass it, it’s the languid way in which he knows exactly where his team-mate is and he just strokes the ball so comfortably.
Pele and I got on immediately - a lovely, kind-hearted, interesting person
When I was at Tranmere I was also PFA chairman, and Gordon Taylor was the chief executive. He said to me: this might be your last year, so we should get a special guest of honour for the end of season awards dinner. Gordon suggested Pele, and we managed to get him, and my job for the evening, in my capacity as chairman, was to take care of him all night. The reaction when he walked into the room was incredible, jaws hit the floor, and then a respectful queue formed at the top table – including famous people, waiting for the great man’s autograph. Pele and I got on immediately, although I bet he was like that with everyone, because he was a really lovely, kind-hearted, interesting person. After that night, I was staying in my London flat with my dad and my brother who had come down. In the morning, Dad said he was going to Mass. I don’t do religion, so I told him just to go without me, and my brother said that he was too tired to attend. When my dad returned, I asked him, how was Mass? And he replied, oh, it was lovely – I was talking to that guy Pele. He had met Pele at Mass and they had had a lovely chat – and my brother was so regretful that he didn’t go to church!
At the dinner, I didn’t really want to ask for Pele’s autograph, but I couldn’t resist it, so I asked him to sign my place mat. He told me that he hated the name Pele, so he wrote, To Pat Nevin, from Edson, which I loved. I would have loved to have bumped into him again. It never happened, but you always feel he’s a part of you. When he died, I was actually on air and I had to talk about him. I stayed professional and held it together, but quite quickly I thought, no, don’t be sad. Be unbelievably happy that he was there to shine his bright light. I remember thinking at the time of a story that Pele told me: that his father had called him Edson because of Thomas Edison, who invented the electric light bulb. His dad chose that name because his new baby was the light of his life – except he couldn’t spell Edison – so he called him Edson! So I was sad but kind of happy that he’d had a good, long life, and I just thought, there’s a light there, and that light’s never going dim.
My Sporting Hero: Pat Nevin on Pele