page_title: Pelé
section_title: New York Cosmos
hierarchical_section_title: Pelé / Club career / New York Cosmos
caption_attribution_description: English: Pelé entering the field to play his first game.
context_page_description: Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known as Pelé, is a Brazilian retired professional footballer who played as a forward. Widely regarded as the greatest player of all time, he was among the most successful and popular sports figures of the 20th century. During his playing days, Pelé was for a period the best-paid athlete in the world.
  In 1999, Pelé was voted World Player of the Century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics, and was one of the two joint winners of the FIFA Player of the Century award. That same year, Pelé was elected Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee and was included in the Time list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. According to the IFFHS, Pelé is the most successful top division scorer of all times with 541 goals in 560 appearances. His total of 1279 goals in 1363 games, which included friendlies, is a Guinness World Record.
  Pelé began playing for Santos at age 15 and the Brazil national team at 16. During his international career, he won three FIFA World Cups: 1958, 1962 and 1970, being the only player ever to do so. Pelé is the all-time leading goalscorer for Brazil with 77 goals in 92 games.
context_section_description: After the 1974 season (his 19th with Santos), Pelé retired from Brazilian club football although he continued to occasionally play for Santos in official competitive matches. Two years later, he came out of semi-retirement to sign with the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League (NASL) for the 1975 season. At a chaotic press conference at the Big Apple's famous presidential hang-out, the 21 Club, the Cosmos announced the transfer coup of the century when they unveiled the three-times World Cup winner as their latest recruit. "We had superstars in the United States but nothing at the level of Pele," says John O'Reilly, the club's media spokesman. "Everyone wanted to touch him, shake his hand, get a photo with him." Though well past his prime at this point, Pelé was credited with significantly increasing public awareness and interest of the sport in the United States. During his first public appearance in Boston, he was injured by a crowd of fans who had surrounded him and was evacuated on a stretcher. Pelé made his debut for the Cosmos on 15 June 1975 against the Dallas Tornado at Downing Stadium, scoring one goal in a 2–2 draw. Pelé, who would sign autographs all day for fans, also opened the door for many other European stars to play in North America. Giorgio Chinaglia followed him to the Cosmos, then Franz Beckenbauer and his former teammate in Santos Carlos Alberto before several other world-class players helped fill out a formidable Starting XI. Over the next few years other legends decided it was fair game to test the NASL waters, including the Dutch legend Johan Cruyff, Eusebio, Bobby Moore, George Best and Gordon Banks, among others.
  In 1975, one week before the Lebanese Civil War, Pelé played a friendly game for the Lebanese club Nejmeh against a team of Lebanese Premier League stars, scoring two goals which were not included in his official tally. On the day of the game, 40,000 spectators were at the stadium from early morning to watch the match.
  Hoping to fuel the same kind of awareness in the Dominican Republic, he and the Cosmos team played in an exhibition match against Haitian team, Violette AC, in the Santo Domingo Olympic Stadium on 3 June 1976, where over 25,000 fans watched him score a winning goal in the last seconds of the match, leading the Cosmos to a 2–1 victory. He led the Cosmos to the 1977 NASL championship, in his third and final season with the club.
  In June 1977, the Cosmos attracted an NASL-record 62,394 fans to Giants Stadium for a 3–0 victory past the Tampa Bay Rowdies as a 37-year-old Pelé reigned with a hat-trick. The team suddenly caught lightning in a bottle as attending Cosmos games became the trendy thing to do. Even gritty Daily News columnist Dick Young, a baseball aficionado, admitted he was won over. “I had been seduced by Pelé,” he wrote. By the end of the season, Pelé did not always have to be the leader of the band thanks to his excellent supporting cast. In the first leg of the quarter-final series, they attracted a US-record crowd of 77,891 for what turned into an 8–3 rout of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers at Giants Stadium. In the second leg of the semi-finals against the Rochester Lancers , a 4–1 triumph, the Cosmos attracted 73,669 people. 
  Pelé finished his official playing career by leading the New York Cosmos to their first Soccer Bowl title by posting a 2–1 win over the   
  Seattle Sounders in New Jersey, at Portland’s Civic Stadium.
  On 1 October 1977, Pelé closed out his career in an exhibition match between the Cosmos and Santos. The match was played in front of a sold-out crowd at Giants Stadium and was televised in the United States on ABC's Wide World of Sports as well as throughout the world. Pelé's father and wife both attended the match, as well as Muhammad Ali and Bobby Moore. Before the game Pele said to the 75,646 of attendance: “Love is more important than what we can take in life. Everything pass. Please say with me, three times—;love! love! love!” As the message board flashed the word, Pele heard the crowd echo his message three times. Love! Lov
caption: Pelé entering the field to play his first game with the Cosmos, 15 June 1975
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "28", "Image YResolution": "28", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2020:10:25 10:30:56", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4128", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "362", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "669"}