With two goals in a resounding Brazil win, a teenage striker announced himself on the global stage at the 1958 World Cup.
Already a star of his country’s Campeonato Paulista, for clubs in and around Sao Paulo, he had travelled to Sweden as one of South America’s brightest talents, eager to deliver the Selecao their first ever World Cup trophy.
In the tiny town of Uddevalla, north of Gothenburg, things couldn’t have begun any better for 19-year-old Palmeiras forward Mazzola. It was he, not Santos’ 17-year-old striker, Pele, who started Brazil’s opening game of that tournament and scored twice in a 3-0 win over Austria.
As it turned out, Mazzola would never net for Brazil again. Three days later, he was injured in a 0-0 draw against England, just as Pele was returning to fitness following a knee problem. While the Palmeiras man faded into the background in Sweden, before joining Milan that summer and appearing for the Italian national team under his original name of Jose Altafini, Brazil’s even younger starlet made the World Cup his own.
By the tournament’s end, Pele had bagged a brace in a 5-2 final win against the hosts, scored six times in all, and wowed the world in a way no footballer had before. And for the next decade, he was the best player on Earth.
FULFILLING A PROMISE
At first, Pele just wanted to emulate his dad. Dondinho was a striker with Bauru, a small city north-west of Sao Paulo. “My father scored a lot of goals,” Pele told FourFourTwo in an exclusive interview back in 2010. “I said, ‘One day, I’m going to be like him’.”
Aged nine, he saw his father cry as Brazil missed out on lifting their first ever World Cup
