The Gulf people saw Pele for the first time in nature, 3 years following he won the World Cup for the third time in Mexico in 1970, in a famous visit to the Arab region that is preserved in the memory of contemporaries.
In February of that year, the ancient Santos Club came to the Middle East for the first time, and of course the “King” with its famous number 10 was leading the mission, and he played with the Kuwaiti Qadisiyah team in a match in which he mentions the brilliance of goalkeeper Abdul Hameed Al-Shatti, who confronted Pele’s attempts in that match, but escaped from him A ball was used by the player crowned with 3 World Cups to score Santos’ first goal, but the famous Kuwaiti star Jassem Yaqoub equalized the result minutes later.
Santos also played during that period with the Saudi national youth team at Prince Faisal bin Fahd Stadium in Riyadh, and at that time Ahmed Eid was the goalkeeper, the only player included in the Saudi squad from the first team, and that confrontation witnessed Pele scoring the second goal in a match that ended 3-0.
Pele received a famous yellow card in the match that brought Santos together in the same round once morest the Bahrain national team, as the former Bahraini international referee, Ibrahim Al-Dawi, mentions that the “king” was a lot of objection to the referee’s decisions, which prompted the latter to raise the yellow card in the face of the Brazilian star during the match that ended. 7-1 in favor of Santos.
Santos, led by Pele, played with Al-Ahly of Qatar in Doha and won 4-0, and with four goals without a response to the Emirati victory in Dubai during that round, before heading to Cairo to meet Al-Ahly, and then the Brazilians won 5-0, and then Sudan when it faced Al-Hilal and won it with a goal without. Reply.
Pele’s first visit to the Arab region came in 1965 when he visited Algeria with the Brazil national team to meet the hosts in a friendly match.
