Pele's was God's gift: retiring the No 10 shirt, his love for Scottish salmon, memories he left for football world

Pelé speaks to the media in advance of his only Scottish date during his UK tour.

The footballer's family are reported to have already requested that Santos, one of only two club sides he played for throughout his career, make this gesture.

It's a trickier homage to perform when it comes to the Brazil national side, such is the significance attached to the number. But then isn't the reason the shirt has become so symbolic purely because it was once Pele's?

There have been several outstanding inheritors. Zico and now Neymar have worn the yellow Selecao shirt with distinction. But they are not Pele. There will never be another Pele.

He’s the one it always seems to come back to. He’s the player John Lambie chose to reference when one of his Partick Thistle players was left dazed and confused after a head knock. “Tell him he’s Pele and get him back on,” he urges the physio, and a staple of many after-dinner routines is born.

"Who do you think you are, Pele!?" is still the universal shorthand employed by exasperated coaches after a player's attempt to be over-elaborate. The sad news that emerged from a Sao Paulo hospital on Thursday night will not change this.

There’s something so enduring about Pele it makes those heartbreaking photographs from the hospital ward posted on social media by his daughter seem like he’s sold us his greatest-ever dummy; Pele cannot die. He has simply sent us one way and gone the other.

There's one passage of play that sums up his genius; when he leaves Uruguay goalkeeper Ladisao Mazurklewicz grappling thin air in the semi-final of the 1970 World Cup after he was fooled into thinking Pele would take a pass from midfield in his stride rather than let it run by him. And then he didn't even score. What's another goal when he ended up with a total of 1282 goals in 1324 in games?

As much as those such as Hugh McIlvaney, in this very newspaper, have written beautifully on the subject of Pele, it was the unlikely figure of pop artist Andy Warhol who perhaps got closest to identifying the footballer's impact when he announced that the player had forced him to review his statement about everyone being famous for 15 minutes. In Pele’s case, he said, it would be for 15 centuries.

In the sporting sphere, perhaps only Muhammad Ali has secured this level of sporting immortality. As the Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote: "What is difficult, even extraordinary, is not to score 1000 goals like Pele; it is to score one goal like Pele."

Scotland was graced by his brilliance in 1966 when Brazil played at Hampden for a World Cup warm-up. Pele was given a taste of what was to come in the tournament itself as Billy Bremner paid particularly close attention to the superstar in the 1-1 draw. Pele apparently refused to swap his shirt with Bremner afterwards, instead exchanging it with Scotland’s goalscorer Stevie Chalmers.

“Yes, I remember Bremner…,” he is reported to have chuckled at an event to launch the Under-16 World Championship held in Scotland in 1989. Pele had been retired for 12 years by this time but was still looking fit and well. He was in his late 40s and had made the transition from football genius to global ambassador for the game. “I am here because I started the game at the same age as these lads,” he said.

He joined then Scotland manager Andy Roxburgh on a trip to Dens Park in Dundee, one of the host grounds, the following day. Some of the photographs from the football clinic held with pupils from Blairgowrie’s Hill Primary school have circulated online in the last 24 hours. Indeed, Roxburgh has one hanging in the office of his home in Nyon, where he recently returned after the World Cup in Qatar. Now technical director for the Asian Football Confederation, he has been saddened to learn the news of Pele’s death.

“His pictures are all around me,” Roxburgh told The Scotsman yesterday. “The one behind me is actually Dens Park, where we are crouching down together with a football. I think to myself, ‘that certainly wasn’t the Partick Thistle strikeforce at the time!’

"I actually worked with him quite a lot. He worked with Umbro in America, as I did on occasion as well. I was even in his house in Sao Paulo once. We were on the player of the tournament award panel in France at the ’98 World Cup. We had a number of times together. He was fantastic company.”

Roxburgh was in Sao Paulo to watch a Brazil match when Pele invited him to his house. “I let him know I was there and he sent a car round for me, brought me to his house and we had a great laugh. I remember we did another event together in Cincinnati. We were in a car en route. He asked: ‘Is this function on boat? I said: ‘yes, I gather so’. He said: ‘I can’t go on a boat. I get seasick!’ I had to assure him it was moored on a river. It did not move!”

“When he was in Scotland, he was fanatical about Scottish salmon. He took it for breakfast, lunch and dinner." Roxburgh even picked Pele up from Glasgow airport ahead of the 1989 youth tournament. “I had the good fortune to spend time with him,” he continued. “He was not only a football star, a world icon, but he was genuinely the nicest guy you could meet. He was never put out by a queue suddenly building up to get his autograph or get a photograph taken. In fact, he would not move until everyone was happy.”

He continued to spread these good vibes around the world long after he finished playing and perhaps this sets him apart from those such as Diego Maradona, whose chaotic lifestyle did not and could not accommodate such duties.

Recalling a football argument with Brazilian journalists at the 1974 World Cup over who was the greatest footballer, the then Times football writer Geoffrey Green gave his vote to Alfredo Di Stefano. It was firmly rejected. “Di Stefano was manufactured on earth,” the Brazilian corps told him. “Pele came from heaven.”

Green admitted he had no answer to this way of separating Pele from the rest. Even though others such as Maradona and Lionel Messi have since emerged, there's still a sense that Pele, with his liquid joints, spring-like heels and easy charm, was God's gift.