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As one of Brazil’s footballing stars once said: ‘I would say before Pelé football was just a sport. Pelé has changed it all. He turned football into art, into entertainment…He's gone but his magic remains. Pelé is FOREVER!!’

Along with Muhammad Ali, Pelé was the best-known sportsman of the 20th century. The numbers speak for themselves: he was only 17 when he played for Brazil in the 1958 World Cup finals, scoring six goals in their last three games; he was the only player to have won the World Cup three times; and across his career he scored a record-breaking number of goals, estimated at over 1,200.

What elevates Pelé beyond these statistics is how he played. Pelé popularised the description of football as “the beautiful game” and no one played it more beautifully or with such joy than the man known as the King in his native Brazil. He even helped introduce “soccer” to the Americans, after a move facilitated by Henry Kissinger.

And yet, those books that do exist on Pelé are hagiographies that tell only one side of the story. In Epic, revered football correspondent Andrew Downie paints the full picture of Pelé, from getting so drunk as a boy that he was teetotal for years, to training in hotel corridors and being the consummate team player, to his house being shot up or bombed and never-before told stories from inside his three marriages.

Through interviews with Pelé’s family and former teammates, unpublished memoirs and archival material from across the world emerges the unseen portrait of one of the greatest sports stars that world has ever seen.

© Andrew Downie 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026