Pele, the King of Football

 

Pele, the King of football has passed away at the age of 82. The world mourns the loss of the undisputed king of football or soccer if you are an Amrikan. Before, Messi, we had Maradona and before him, we had Pele but the 'Black Pearl' continues to overshadow every other football player who have played this game on Earth. 

Elon Musk might start a football league in Mars in 2040 but until then, Pele was and will always be the greatest player in our galaxy.

Every generation has football greats and we cannot and should not compare one with the other. The world has witnessed great players such as Just Fontaine, Eusebio, Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and many more. The new generation knows Beckham, Zidane, Ronaldo from Brazil, Ronaldo from Portugal, Messi and many more. But Pele was different. 

Pele was known all around the world when most of the developing countries didn't even have a TV channel or the population didn't even own any television sets. And there was no live news. Folks got their news from newspapers in so-called third world countries but everyone knew Pele. The closest anyone had come to greatness was Maradona and now Messi will also be known forever like these two football Gods.

Pele was the only player and will most likely be the only player to lift the World Cup three times. He almost averaged a goal per game in his football career. Everybody wanted to be Pele until Maradona came along almost two decades later. 

The young generation then wanted to be Maradona until Messi came along almost two decades later. Mbappe could  possibly win another World Cup but it will be very difficult to match Pele's record of winning it three times. Mbappe has already matched Pele's goal record of 12 goals at the World Cup and don't be surprised if he becomes the highest goal scorer beating Miroslav Klose's record of 16 goals, come 2026!

Brazil has always played football like they do the samba. It's beautiful and always fun to watch. As a kid, I still remember Zico, Socrates in the 80s. Romario in the 90s, Ronaldo and Kaka after that and many more. 

How can Nepal qualify for the World Cup? We will never accomplish that feat as long as we have our incompetent government focusing more on milking funds from sports organizations and making it a place to employ their cadres. Our football association and nearly all other sports organizations have corrupt officials who only want the positions to make some dough. 

Ganesh Thapa made hundreds of crores while he was heading ANFA, our own football association. ANFA now has a budget in hundreds of crores per year and they still can't operate a national league on time. 

Our young, talented footballers either leave our land to work in foreign lands or the most they can achieve is to play in other football leagues in India or other Asian countries. If you do a background check on most of the officials at our sports organizations, then you won't be surprised to find out that most of them are or were either mundrey gundas or politicians or mundrey gundas who later became thulo netas. 

Let's get back to football. Pele was 5'8 tall. Messi is 5'7 and Maradona was only five feet and five inches. So, we really don't have to be lanky like the Germans and the Dutch to play a beautiful game. We have had and we still do have talented football players. They just don't receive the incentives to play the game without worrying about their future. 

ANFA could have done a lot with its youth academy but so far it has failed miserably to make lives of our footballers better. Messi was 13 when Barcelona offered him the opportunity to join their youth academy but he had been showing great talent before he reached the first grade. If we really want to qualify for the World Cup then ANFA should started at the primary level and nurture the talented youngsters for a decade and hopefully they can do wonders.

First, let us focus on becoming the unbeatable SAF champions for a decade and then another decade to rule Asia and maybe the world. Our football players get peanuts and have no income after their football career is over. Our banks and byaparis make billions of dollars in profit and so far, none of our football players can retire comfortably. Our government, be it our federal or provincial, have no real concrete plans to provide them jobs like they do across the border.

We might look at China and India and say, well, these two big giants can't do sheet in the football world and how can we do anything better? It's not about how big your country is or how rich your government is... it's all about passion and policies to develop the love for the game at the grassroot level. 

Uruguay has barely three and half  million folks and they seem to be doing pretty well! Well, they won twice back in the 30s and 50s!

We can even learn a thing or two from Iceland where less than 3 lakhs folks live. What did Iceland do right?  Well, twenty years ago, the government invested heavily in youth football by forming a well-oiled club system and pouring tons of dough to built great facilities and providing professional training to coaches from the junior level to the professional level.ANFA can do it but we can't be always dependent on FIFA for additional funds. 

Our government must invest from the grassroots level to the top not only in football but all sports. Unless, we invest more in sports and arts, we will not really move ahead. 

And we only talk about men's football but we tend to forget that our women's national team is very good and could qualify for the World Cup in the next ten years if we invest in them. The women's team have a better odds of playing at the global stage then our men's. 

Maybe, we should all get together and create a fund and an organization to develop young female players from the age of 10. Who knows, in a decade, our women footballers will be known all around the world for their skills. 

Same goes for the men too but we all know that our Sports Ministry gets peanuts and our government officials steal the dough for their own benefit instead of helping our athletes. That's the way it is. Maybe, it's time for changes like Swami Tupac Shakur used to tell us in his sermons back in the days.

For complaints, send me an email at  maguffadi@gmail.com 

Image source: CNN