PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Former Trinidad & Tobago midfielder and coach, Everald “Gally” Cummings, who played against Pelé, has hailed the Brazilian as “the greatest” footballer of all time.
Pelé, born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, died last Thursday in the Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he was battling colon cancer for the past month. He was 82.
“As far as I am concerned, he is the best player I have ever seen, and he will remain the best player I have ever seen,” Cummings told the Trinidad Newsday newspaper.
Cummings, who was the national team coach in the 1980s during the Strike Squad years, recalled when Pelé played an exhibition match against a T&T side of which he was a part in 1972 at Queen’s Park Oval in the two-island republic’s capital of Port of Spain.
“It was marred with a lot of problems because people were by the Queen’s Park Oval from about nine the morning for a match four o’clock in the evening,” the 74-year-old said. “Santos beat us 1-0 and Pele scored a header.
“I think the game only played about 45 or 50 minutes, but he scored a very good goal, and it’s history… People were encroaching on the field and wanted to touch Pelé. He could not go for the ball on the sidelines because everybody hugging him up. Plenty love.”
Cummings added: “Pelé brought what you call the samba, the Brazilian style of football. He just practically walked through us. I was on the field like a kid in a candy store. I playing in the game, but I am ball watching at the same time.
“He used to do some kind of things I could not understand at a young age… I saw somebody to emulate. I use to practise some of the things that I saw him do… until I made one of those moves my signature move.”
Above all else, Cummings praised Pelé for his humility, remembering the deceased footballer signing autographs for him and taking photos during a chance meeting, and spending time with him after they had both retired.
An incident on the field during the 1972 exhibition match also impressed Cummings, and he said it spoke volumes about the man the sport now mourns.
“One of his players stamped on my shinbone and dig up pieces of the flesh, and my foot was bleeding so I was on the ground,” Cummings said.
“He (Pelé) called the player (who fouled me) on the field and chastised him… and (Pele) helped me get up.
“That man was concerned about other people while he was playing. Even though he wanted to win the game, his character was way past expectations.”
The Brazilian government announced three days of mourning ahead of the funeral for Pelé.
His body will be embalmed and taken from the hospital for a public funeral that starts at 10 a.m. on Monday at Santos Stadium, where he started his career.
The coffin containing the body of Pelé will be placed under a white tented area in the centre of the field, and fans will be able to pay their respects for 24 hours.
The coffin will be placed in a hearse and taken on a special public parade that will pass through the district of Canal 6, where Celeste, the 100-year-old mother of Pelé, still lives.
The cortege will then continue to his final resting place, the Memorial Necropole Ecumenica cemetery in Santos, where a private funeral, for family members only, will be held.
The coffin will be interred in a vertical cemetery, which according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the tallest in the world with 14 storeys and 14 000 vaults, where Pelé will be laid to rest with family members.
