Pele should be respected in America | TheGovenator's Blog

A collection of my works: After browsing through Time Magazine, my perception of Sports was changed. I always thought Pele, and the rest of Soccer was a joke. But when I read this paragraph, it amazed me. "Performance at a high level in any sport is to exceed the ordinary human scale. But Pele's performance transcended that of the ordinary star by as much as the star exceeds ordinary performance. He scored an average of a goal in every international game he played the equivalent of a baseball player's hitting a home run in every World Series game over 15 years. Between 1956 and 1974, Pele scored a total of 1,220 goals not unlike hitting an average of 70 home runs every year for a decade and a half. How do you spell Pele G-O-D. He has been known to stop war: both sides in Nigeria's civil war called a 48-hour cease-fire in 1967 so Pele could play an exhibition match in the capital of Lagos." I made a Throwdown about it. Yet people still don't understand, because quite frankly America doesn't care about soccer. America isn't the only people that inhabit the planet. There are 5.7 billion other people in the world. And if you take away our share to the population, and ask every man and woman on "Do you know who Pele is?" I gurantee you they will. For one, soccer is by far the most popular sport. Two, Pele is easily considered the greatest and most popular player of that sport. So, do the math. Logically it makes sense to safely say Pele is the most well known Athlete in the world. Yet, America still gives him no respect. I mean just take a look, Pele's achievements. They are unrivaled by any athlete. President Janio Quadros declared Pele as a national treasure..... His last exhibition match between Cosmos and Santos in which he played for both sides was sold out 6 weeks in advance, covered by 650 journalists and broadcast live, in 38 nations.....Pele was the recipient of the International Peace Award.....The king of soccer was awarded the title of Athlete of the Century by the National Olympic Committee. He surpassed Olympic greats Muhammad Ali, Carl Lewis and Michael Jordan to clinch the coveted title....)He received an honorary British knighthood. I could literally go on forever.... It's one thing for us Americans to down soccer, but to ignore his feats is truly ignorant.