As football’s first global superstar, Pelé played the game just about everywhere a person could play it.
While he remained with Brazilian club Santos FC for almost his entire career — with the nation even declaring him a national treasure to prevent him from leaving — he and his side travelled the world, raking in a small fortune through exhibition games and friendlies against other clubs and national teams.
Pelé made several promotional visits to Australia over the years but few as a player and his debut on this soil in Sydney in 1972 looms largest.
Two years after he'd helped Brazil win their third World Cup, cementing his status as one of the game's greatest-ever players, Pelé and Santos were invited to the Sydney Sports Ground for a one-off friendly against the Socceroos.
The prospect of watching him bang in a couple more goals against an unassuming bunch of Aussies was enough to fill the 6,000-capacity ground six-times over.
Pelé didn’t score in Sydney, though. It was one of the few cities he never did. And it was largely thanks to Ray Richards, the then-pride of Marconi, who was tasked with marking the Brazilian legend out of the match that day.
And if Pelé own words are anything to go by, he did a damned fine job of it as well.
“I’m happy for the privilege. It's something that I treasure," Richards said.
"For Pelé, in a newspaper in Germany, he said he'd played against all the top players in the world including (Franz) Beckenbauer and Bobby Moore from England, but he said the hardest game of his career was against 'a moustachioed individual in Australia called Richards'.
“It’s just a feather in your cap that you wear forever.
"When it came out through the newspaper, I was surprised and amazed. He said that I should be playing over in Germany, or words to that effect, rather than being here in Australia."
Pelé was the type of man who was larger than life, and for whom myth exists together with truth.
Details grow hazy, especially when the games happened so long ago, and not everyone remembers things the same.
But you can be sure that Richards gave Pelé a hell of a time; one that the Brazilian never forgot. Rale Rasic, who was head coach of Australia at the time, remembers the praise well.
"That is gospel truth," Rasic said.
"It is more than special, that Pelé said that. Can you believe it?"
Richards putting the clamps on Pelé was the achievement of a sporting lifetime, but it's close to a miracle he even got the chance.
There was plenty of drama around Santos' tour, with the Brazilian club initially refusing to take the field unless their match fee of $37,000 was delivered — in cash — on the morning of the game.
When it wasn't, they refused to leave the hotel until a frantic scramble to multiple banks ended up salvaging the game, albeit with a delayed start time.
"The public didn't know what was happening, so the excitement was just building as people became edgy and desperate for the game to kick off," Rasic said.
"At last the money was paid, we walked into the dressing room and I did not nominate who would mark Pelé until then. I took Ray Richards aside and I pointed to Pelé. Ray went straight into the toilet and vomited because he was so excited."
Richards did bring it all up when he found out he'd be going head-to-head with the pride of Brazil, but it wasn't from nerves or excitement. Instead, it was from a migraine he picked up on a dodgy car ride to the ground after doing a television interview that morning.
He also says he knew during the week that he'd be saddled with marking Pelé, so he came to the Sports Ground with a plan.
"I really made up my mind before the game that, if I'm going to be successful, I've got to stop him from getting the ball," Richards said.
"That was my main aim: to intercept the ball before he was able to get it and work his magic.
"I didn't have moments [of doubt]; I had full hours. I was putting myself in match situations and how I was going to approach it, and I made up my mind that I always wanted to stand off to one side, not mark him directly from behind. Always off to one side so I could attack or approach the ball hopefully before him."
For his part, Rasic had two instructions for his man ahead of the hardest task of his football life.
"I said two things: 'You have to mark him, and you cannot kick him. But you must stop him'," Rasic said.
"He said 'how do I do that?' and I said 'you will find out, but if you kick him, you are off'."
By the time the match got underway, the Sports Ground was heaving as Sydney showed out for a glimpse of the master at work.
They didn't see too much of the magic they were looking for thanks to Richards, but Pelé did set up a goal for Edu with an inch-perfect pass as the match ended 2-all.
"There was about 32,000, and I think the ground's capacity was about 6,000," Richards said.
"They were up the pylons and the light towers and everything; they climbed all the way up there to get a vantage-point.
"They all came and paid to see Pelé, and I marked him out of the game, basically, so they weren't totally happy!
"Looking back now, you say 'Jesus, did we really do that? Did we really achieve those levels?'.
"I should be proud and I am proud. Because I'm always proud when I'm wearing the green and gold."
Richards also ended up swapping jerseys with Pelé; a prize he treasures to this day. He has kept it hidden away for all this time, but lent to the Sydney Cricket Ground Museum a few years ago for safe-keeping.
For Richards, that 1972 game was not a personal triumph: it was an Australian one. So, the jersey doesn't belong to him — it belongs to all of us.
"We shook hands not only during the game but also before and after," Richards said.
"They [SCG Museum] rang me today and said that they want to put it out for the cricket Test so everybody can see and take photos of it. It's as much theirs as it is mine.
"I could have sold the jersey overseas and I refused each time — basically because I think it belongs here in Australia. It's part of our history and I think it should stay here."
But there was a time when Richards may not have got Pele's jersey at all. The 76-year-old remembers Santos officials trying to get it back because they weren't happy with the final score.
Rasic recalls it a little differently — he thinks police patrolling the match tried to snag it for themselves.
What is certain is that Rasic smuggled the jersey out in his kitbag, taking a small piece of history shared by every other Australian who left the ground with a memory they would treasure for the rest of their lives.
"Every Australian player stands taller than six feet when they say they played against Pelé," Rasic said.
"This is the excitement, the pride and honour, that still exists for any person who got to meet Pelé, to touch him. I get so excited when I talk about him.
"For all these occasions where I met Pelé, every time was like meeting him for the first time. I always had that excitement at seeing something so special."
Pelé truly was larger than life, as Richards came to know during a book tour the Brazilian conducted in Australia years later.
Somehow, Richards got the job of driving Pelé around — probably because he owned a Mercedes with very particular plates.
"When he came out here to launch the book, I picked him up at the television station. My Mercedes' number plate was 'Pele 1'," Richards said.
"I picked him up at the television station and took him to Dymocks book shop to do the book launch and sign for the people buying the book, they all lined up.
"When I pulled up to the curb with Pelé in the back seat, they all swarmed the car.
"They said 'Pelé arrived in his personal Mercedes!' And I was his chauffeur!
"I love the man. Thorough gentleman. There is nothing you can't say about Pelé. He's an absolute genius.
"For someone that can have an African country stop a civil war for three days just to watch him play – that's the sort of impact this man had on people around the world."
There's one other story about Pelé that Rasic loves telling.
It came years after that day in Sydney when his friend, the German journalist Peter Bizer, was commissioned by FIFA in the 1980s to interview 11 of the sport's greatest ever players.
"I asked him who was the most difficult and he said Pelé, by far, which was a surprise," Rasic said.
"He told me he arrived in Sao Paulo, him and his camera crew. Pelé and Carlos Alberto took them out to lunch, and they blocked off the restaurant for them: the most famous restaurant in Santos.
"Everything was set up for them. They sat down, and an hour later, some crooks walked in with guns and said, 'wallets, wallets, wallets!'
"But when they got to Pelé and Carlos, they just said: 'not you two, you two keep them'."
There are some guys you don't rob. There are some guys you don't kick.
For Rasic, there might be other great players — Maradona, Messi, someone else way off in the distance — but the sport won't soon see a better man.
"He meant so much, even to the bandidos. We look at how they play, but we do not analyse the qualities of the person, and that's what made Pelé different," Rasic said.
"Somebody might be equal to him on the field of play, but nobody was equal to him in human terms, to be such a gentle, glorious human being. I regard him as the greatest sportsman of all time.
"That is what Pelé means."
