Pelé had a heavy bag with Brazil.
He was the total footballer and that meant the responsibility for him to win everything.
If he got it, he had to outdo himself as many times as necessary.
This burden of being the best was accentuated when the military dictatorship used him as the exemplary Brazilian, an emblem for the world.
That forced him to win his third World Cup at all costs in 1966. The excessive pressure caused the
Canarinha
to fall in the first round of the World Cup.
Four years later, in Mexico, Pelé found two soccer temples that forged him as a sports legend and where he was able to rediscover his smile.
The Brazilian team made its camp for the 1970 World Cup in Guadalajara, Jalisco, a city that sheltered it from the first days and that helped dissipate the pressure emanating from the Brazilian government.
“It was an important World Cup for Brazil, but at that time, I didn't want to be Pelé,” he said in the documentary of his life on Netflix.
The Brazilian Confederation chose the Caribe Suites as its hotel, now converted into a four-star hotel.
Training was done at Club Providencia, a small institution that managed to convince the then two-time world champion to train at its facilities.
Those of Providencia were not the best fields in Guadalajara because those were those of the professional teams of Atlas and Chivas.
The representatives of Brazil only asked for three things: that only four employees could do the cleaning, privacy and that no one else enter the field.
One of the club's members, Samuel Rodríguez, admitted to ESPN that Providencia had the mischief of going to harass the managers so that
Canarinha
would stay with them.
52 years later, a Pelé signature remains on one of the ceilings and a commemorative plaque.
In the Caribe Suites there was a mural in room 154 in honor of the Brazilians, but with the modernization of the place it became extinct.
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The Mexicans inaugurated the so-called Plaza Brasil in the vicinity of a bullring and the Jalisco stadium.
That venue was the ideal refuge for the team led by Zagallo: there they played the three games of the group stage, the quarterfinal match and the semifinals.
Guadalajara opted for Pelé over the English Bobby Charlton.
The locals were not wrong because that team from Brazil swept all their rivals, they never tied or lost.
Pelé plays the guitar during one of his spare moments at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.Pictorial Parade
Thousands of girls, boys and adults surrendered to Pelé from the stands.
Mexico, beyond the frenzy in the stands, was fortunate to be the first World Cup organizer to have the matches broadcast in color for the entire world.
All of Pelé's talent was immortalized.
In the final, against Italy, the Brazilian team won 4-1 on the pitch of the Azteca stadium.
Goodbye to the pressure that came together since 1964, with the coup.
Pelé found relief from him, a way to redeem himself with his arms raised, shirtless and wearing a charro hat.
O Rei
's feat
gave this Mexican stadium prestige.
Sixteen years later, another soccer phenomenon, Diego Armando Maradona, was also crowned champion.
In 2026 the Azteca will once again host at least a couple of matches.
Pelé was generous with Mexico.
He played again in Mexico, with Santos, in a friendly tournament in Guadalajara in 1975. He rubbed shoulders with the highest-ranking characters in the country such as Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, then president of Televisa, and Mario Moreno,
Cantinflas
.
Already in 2011 he attended as a guest of honor at the inauguration of the Santos stadium (the one in Laguna de Torreón) in 2011 and was later inducted as a great player into the only soccer Hall of Fame in the world, based in Pachuca. .
“Of all the trips in my career, everyone asks me: Which one is the best, which one did you have the most fun on?
A country that I cannot forget because of the love, the attention they gave me and how they treated me, I say again, was Mexico," Pelé said in a video released by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2020.
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