When Pele Came to India

I have been trawling through a lot of football (soccer) blogs of late, and I have noticed a lot of women blogging about the Beautiful Game. Trust me, most of them seem to be doing a great job of it.

Anyway, Roswitha has a nice anecdote about the time when Pele came to Calcutta to play with his New York Cosmos team against Mohun Bagan. A great read, I have to say:

In 1977, former gateway of the British Empire and present cauldron of intellectual ferment and revolution, the great city of Calcutta, played host to an extraordinary game: the last-but-one ever played by the legend, O Rey himself, Pele.[...]Calcutta having always been a literary city, and the merchandising juggernaut as yet a glint in the eye of international football [one assumes]. The game was to be played at Eden Gardens at the end of September. Pele arrived, but with him came a torrential monsoon shower, leaving the pitch clogged with water. The great man was seen looking upon the sight of the slush with sombre countenance, and the city worried: would they see him play at all?