Page 54 - Que Nem Pelé EN ONLY MasterMarch4th23 (1)_Neat

had written and I was paying her a fee to select on

my behalf. Perhaps you can now see the problems

I faced and the nepotism it may generate?

My idea was to tell the story of Pele’s life from his

birth in the small town of Three Hearts (Tres

Corocão) to the time he was selected by Santos

Football Club at the age of 15. He played for the

national side soon after. The story was to be a

simplified biography told in such a way as to focus

on the 7 to 11-year-old boy. One of the local São

Paulo daily newspapers was called the Folio to São

Paulo a huge circulation of both the morning and

evening editions. My own editor arranged for me

to visit the archives of the newspaper in downtown

São Paulo, and they were exceedingly kind and

courteous in allowing me three days completely

unsupervised in the rooms allocated only to the

material on Pele’s life. The material content

focused after his joining the Santos team and the

story as a schoolboy with his family was extremely

limited. But it was sufficient for me to gather the

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