EDISON ARANTES do NASCIME.NTO. OR PELE.

Peles real name is Edison Arantes do Nascimento , he is named after the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison. But he gets his name PELE from his childhood days when hefailed to pronounce the name of the goalkeeper of the club VASCO da GAMA Bile, he always pronounced it as Pile and the name was changed to PELE in school and it has stuck for ever.
Pele was born on23/10/1940.
He was rejected as footballer by the club San Paolo. As thhey felt he would never have the standard and class for football. His father was a professinal footballer until a knee injury ended his career. And when Brazil lost the world cup , Peles father even cried. Pele had promised him that one day he would win the world cup for Brazil.
He started from very humble stage as a shoe shine boy at the club where he was born at Boru Athelatic. His father took him for a tst at SAntos, who selected him so he played for SANTOS from 1956 to 1974 , and played a total of 605 games and scored a total of587
goals. And at the end of his career he played in the U.S.A. For the The New York Cosmos and played 64 games and scored 37 goals.The Idea was to popularise the game in the U.S.A.
It might suprise many why Pele was not offered a contract with Europen clubs. The anwer was Brazil considered Pele a Naatinol treasure ans could only be sold to a club in Brazil and not outside it.
He is the only footballer ever to win the world cup thrice no other player has won three winner medals hedid it in 1958, 1962 and 1970. The 1962 medal was not given to him first as Pele had not played the number of games to win the medal. It was decided that the only way to beat Brazil was to injure Pele and the dirty game was played so he suffered a bad injury and missed the games. But F.I./F.A gave Pele his gold medal in november 2007.
Brazil never ever lost a game when Pele and Garrincha played together.
In the 1970 world cup in the game between Italy and Brazil the Italian defenderTarisco Burgnich was told to mark him . This is what he had to say ( Ithought he was made of skin and bones ,but it turned out he was made of something else.)
He scored his first club goal at 15 years.
He was the younges to score a goal in the world cup at 17 years and239 days. He also played for Brazil at the age of 16 years.
Pele was the first footballer ever to score a total of 1000 goals in his career. He did it on november 19 1969 against Vasco da GAMA. when he retired in 1973 he had scored a total of 1281 goals from 1957 to 1973, all these goals have been recognised by F.I.F.A.