IT IS NORMALLY hollywood blockbusters that are treated to digital remastering, but last week a moment of genius from the greatest footballer of all time got a makeover, 47 years after the original masterpiece.
Pelé was 18 when he travelled with Santos to play Juventus, a team from the suburbs of São Paulo, in a Brazilian league match in August 1959 and the majesty of one of his goals that day was finally recognised when club officials from the home team presented him with a statue of himself that will stand outside their tiny Rua Javari ground.
The goal, which has acquired legendary status in Pelé’s home country, reportedly involved him impudently flicking the ball over three defenders and a hapless goalkeeper before one final movement sent the ball back on to his head and into the net.
But if you are looking forward to seeing the goal in question, you could be in for a long wait. No television pictures of it exist and the nearest you will get to it is by downloading a computerised reproduction, complete with Brazilian commentary.
“It’s a big honour for Juventus that Pelé’s most spectacular goal was scored in our stadium,” Armando Raucci, the club’s president, said at the ceremony to mark the unveiling. “He has played in so many places and this is always going to be the one he remembers the most. It doesn’t feel strange to me to pay an homage to a player that scored against our club. Pelé transcends any concept of team or rivalry.”
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Raucci later said that he was not at the ground when the goal was scored, which makes him unusual in the small working-class Italian district of São Paulo in which his team play. The “Moleque Travesso”, or “Naughty Boys”, play in a stadium built to accommodate only 7,000 spectators, but as Bruno Sassi, a Brazilian journalist, said, the number of people at that match appears to have increased as the years have gone by. “If each and every person who swears that they were at the Rua Javari on that day was actually there, the stadium would have to be as big as Maracanã,” he said.
The myth that built up around the goal inspired a new generation of stars from the São Paulo suburbs, among them Deco, the Barcelona and Portugal midfield player, who trained with the club as a junior. Pelé’s memory of the match in which he scored a hat-trick in a 4-0 victory seems sketchy and in his recent autobiography he nominated the goal he scored for Santos against Fluminense at the Maracanã in 1961 as his finest. “I picked up the ball outside our own penalty area and started running with it towards the Fluminense goal,” he said, before adding, modestly: “One player came at me to tackle, then another, then a third, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth . . . I just danced around them all before beating the goalkeeper as well.”
Like his piece of magic against Juventus, no footage of this extraordinary effort exists, but anyone visiting Brazil’s most famous stadium can see a bronze plate on the wall dedicated to a goal that has become known as the “gol de placa” — the goal of the plaque.
It was his effort two years previously that was the subject of the recent celebration, however, and speaking at last week’s ceremony, the world’s most famous No 10 said: “It happened nearly 50 years ago, and there are children here who never saw me play.”
Time has shown, though, that when it comes to “that goal”, age is no barrier. Young or old, nearly everyone it appears was there.