Pele was the first to play on three World Cup winners, as Brazil's win secured the right to take the Jules Rimet Trophy home for good. In 1974, the player nicknamed the Black Pearl played his last game for Santos. He had been planning on retirement but a bad business deal left him $1 million in debt. Top European teams sought to sign the king. But Pele also entertained an offer from the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League FIFA Coins. After leading the Cosmos to the league championship in 1977, Pele played his final game. On a somber day at Giants Stadium, Pele, who played one half for the Cosmos and the other half for Santos, scored his final goal.

A Brazilian newspaper noted about the atmosphere of the rainy day, "Even the Sky Was Crying." After Pele retired, he took his energy as an athlete and put it into his career as a global pitchman and ambassador for soccer. He has spent time broadcasting, writing columns, representing products such as Coca-Cola, MasterCard and Viagra, and even dabbling in politics when he became Brazil's Minister of Sport in 1994. It has been more than a quarter of a century since his last competitive game, and yet Pele cannot visit any country without crowds flocking. When a reporter asked if his fame compared to that of Jesus Christ's, Pele replied, "There are parts of the world where Jesus Christ is not so well known."