MARA-WHO?:

At 17 he was the youngest player in the tournament. At that time

his great talent was just a rumor internationally. An injury to

his right knee, suffered in a pretournament tune-up, kept him on

the bench for Brazil's first two World Cup games. The tension

within him grew as he waited for the chance that might not come.

Then the team doctor cleared him to play, and he was inserted

into the lineup for the final game of the opening round. Within

four minutes of his debut he was banging at the door of the

Soviet goal, rattling the woodwork with a terrific shot. Pele

assisted on the second goal in Brazil's 2-0 win. In the

quarterfinals four days later he scored the only goal in a

victory against Wales--"my most unforgettable goal," Pele would

say years later, because it set Brazil on a course for its first

world title and marked his first step in becoming the world's

most famous team athlete.

In the semifinal Pele unveiled all his skills. After France tied

the game at one in the ninth minute--the first goal allowed by

Brazil in the tournament--Pele grabbed the ball out of the net

and sprinted back upfield for the restart. There were still 81

minutes to play, and here was this teenager acting like a

quarterback in a two-minute drill. "Let's go! Let's get started!

Let's quit wasting time!" he shouted, waving his elder teammates

into position. They stared at him, and then, together, they

scored the next four goals, three of them by Pele.

Before he completed his hat trick, Pele was tackled viciously on

his frail right knee. "I went down, my knee hurting like the

devil, and then rolled over to glare at the player with pure

hatred," he would recall. No substitutions were permitted in

those days; had Pele retreated to the sideline, his team would

have played with 10 men and the tackler would have been

rewarded. Pele would have none of that. Minutes later, when he

saw the same defender closing in on him, Pele flipped the ball

over the villain's head--a "hat" move, as the Brazilians called

it--scampered around him and blasted the ball into the net

before it touched the ground.

Over the three concluding rounds of the World Cup, culminating

in Brazil's 5-2 victory over host Sweden in the final, young

Pele would score six of his country's 11 goals. After many of

them he would sob uncontrollably: He could not quite believe

that all would turn out well. To him the game moved slowly, as

in a trance, and each time he achieved his objective it had the

effect of shaking awake the barefoot child from his feverish

dream, which in fact was not a dream at all.

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