*Did Pele really stop a war? Pele turns 80: 9 unheard stories of the famous football player

Pele, who retired from the game in 1977, is still one of the most celebrated players in the world.

 Pelé has been part of three football World Cup winning teams.  They are the only players in the world to do so.  Pelé, who played 1363 matches in his career, scored a record 1281 goals.

 Hundreds of stories related to his game and record are famous worldwide, but there are some things related to this most famous player in history, which many people do not know.  Read some interesting stories like this.

* Pele had to leave the referee

 It is about Bogota on 18 June 1968.  A friendly match was going on between Pelé's club Santos and the Colombian Olympic Swod.  During this, the referee Guillermo Velasquez asked Pelé to leave the field.  (The use of red cards began in the 1970s).  He was accused of fouling.  According to Velázquez, Pele had misbehaved with him.

But there was a big controversy over this decision of the referee and its protest started. Santos players surrounded the referee. It could be seen in the pictures of the match that Velazquez's eyes had turned black.

The audience present there also opposed him. In an interview given in 2010, he had told that he had to leave the field. He passed his whistle to a linesman and Pelé was called back into the game.

*Did Pele really stop a war?

 In the 1960s, Pelos's Santos FC was one of the most famous football clubs in the world.  Taking advantage of this, this team used to play many friendly matches around the world.  One such match was played on 4 February 1969 in the war-torn region of Nigeria.  In this match Santos Club defeated a local club of Benini City 2–1.
 At that time a bloody civil war was going on in Nigeria.  According to historian Gührem Gorche, Brazilian players and officials were concerned about security, so both sides decided to ceasefire.
 Different things are said about the veracity of this story.  In Pele's first autobiography, which appeared in 1977, nothing was written about it.
 But after 30 years, he had mentioned a second autobiography that appeared.  He wrote that players were told that, "The Civil War could have ended for an exhibition game."
 "I don't know if this is completely accurate, but Nigeria did make sure there was no intrusion at the time we were there," Pele wrote.

* Why didn't Pelé play for Europe's club?

 Pele's critics say that he did not play for any club in Europe, it proved beneficial for him.

 The problem was that, like many other big and small Brazilian players, when he was at the peak of his career, he was prevented from going abroad.

 The Santos club turned down offers from clubs such as Real Madrid and AC Milan. Where the players would play at that time, this decision was not in their hands.

 The pressure to keep them in Brazil was also from the government. In 1961, then-president Janio Quadros declared that Pele was a "national asset" and could not be "exported".

 Although 1975 Pelé became part of a foreign club, he played for a team called the New York Cosmos.