Not long now before we settle down to watch the World Cup from Brazil so time for a personal reflective on one name synonymous with the tournament and will forever be, Edson Arantes do Nascimento – Pelé to anyone who has not been on another planet for the past 50 years.

So many words have been written about the man whose mantel as the best player ever has only been threatened in recent times by the man from Barcelona so a personal perspective is called for.

Like many of my generation I grew up watching black and white images, at first, of a man who could do things with a football no other could. Then when we saw him execute those overhead kicks, usually resulting in goals, and not just in Escape to Victory, we knew he was a god because he could fly, couldn’t he?

Then, black and white became the colour and the jamboree of Mexico 1970 and the greatest footballer starred for the greatest international team in the best ever World Cup which featured some of the most memorable football moments ever captured on film, most of them to be fair involving Pelé. That save by Gordon Banks is safe for another time but for now it’s time to recall when I met Pelé and found out about the man behind the legend.

I had just completed a circumnavigation around the United States and was back at my friend’s house in New Jersey. It was late on Sunday evening and I rolled into bed suffering from a journey of several thousand miles and very little sleep. Monday morning and the worst case of jet lag imaginable (I’m not sure what the term is for exhaustion from days travelling Greyhound but jet leg just about covers it).

Chris and his brother Dave attempted to wake me before the hour hand had climbed anywhere near 9. I said go away or something similar but then Chris whispered that magic word in my ear ‘Pelé‘. Quicker than you can say his real name, I was up and dressed and the three of us were on our way in a battered Chrysler to Bergen High School where the New York Cosmos and their star man were to train.

Chris worked in the PR department of the Cosmos, in Manhattan, and as I was a former trialist (another story) the manager agreed that all three of us could take part in training that day. The routine was tough and the heat, it was July, draining, but to share the same stretch of grass as Pelé and breath the same air was magical in itself.

The coach then called a halt, and during the break one of the assistant coached brought on one of those huge water bottles usually seen only in an office complex.

The Cosmos players, and we three interlopers, took one of those little conical paper cups and drank generously of the life-giving liquid. Once finished the players crushed those cups and discarded them all round where the group was gathered. Pelé crunched his cup also but what happened next enhanced the legend and the man.

Out of the corner of his eye Pelé noted a dozen or so youngsters sitting in the mobile grandstand everyone associates with American college sports fields. So instead of tossing the cup on the ground to join the others he walked thirty yards to dispose of said cup in a waste basket. Class.

Another side of Pelé few have ever witnessed was something I saw when Chris, Dave and myself went to watch the Cosmos play a North American Soccer League game against Washington Diplomats, or the Dips as they were known.

Pelé had been physically assaulted ever since he set foot on a football field as a youngster. For more than 20 years players had been trying to hack him off at the knees or way higher and I don’t think anyone ever saw him retaliate as I, along with a few thousand others, did that night at the Giants Stadium.

One of the Dips defenders that night made it his sole mission to make a name for himself by taking out Pelé. He kicked him, hacked him, elbowed and punched him but Pelé remained unruffled. Until he returned one particularly OTT tackle with interest. The defender decided to change sports and advanced with GBH in mind and attempted a haymaker. What happened next was surreal.

Bearing in mind it was the 1970s and kung-fu was big in the cinemas and Bruce Lee was another god, Pelé backed away, went up on to his toes like Lee, gave himself just enough space and decked his intended assailant with two sharp jabs to the chest before following up with a KO of a left hook to the jaw.

For a few seconds afterwards Pelé continued on his toes, just like Lee, head moving from side to side but still focussed on any further threat before settling back down to earth with one very sorry excuse for a Diplomats defender being carried off the pitch.

Mild mannered Pelé might have been but that night he was a man of steel and a superhero in every sense of the word.