"Football is dead!" "Football will continue to be played up there from now on!" Or "legends never die and Pelé was and remains a legend!" First reactions to Pelé's death from representatives of the international sports press.

Even in Qatar, the football world quietly mourned Pele. Many people speculated whether one of the greatest players the world ever lived, the only three-time world champion, Brazilian Pelé, the seriously ill legend, would be worth the end of the World Cup in Qatar. Many of the Brazilian football lovers predicted that he will surely stay alive until the end of the season, because he is waiting for Neymar to lift the trophy that he managed to win three times.

Today we know that this wish did not come true. In fact, on the contrary: the arch-rival Argentina, led by one of the greatest figures of the era, Messi, was able to lift the trophy, which another icon, who left two years ago, Diego Maradona, was the happiest up there, on top of the clouds. Together with the representatives of the international sports press, we discussed many times during the Qatar vibe that although we knew and prepared in our own way with a kind of obituary, we are still shocked by the news of Pelé's death, one of the biggest losses of the international sports life and the universal football world.

Mandiner has prepared an exclusive compilation of the commemorative thoughts sent to the website by the world of international sports journalists:

Gianni Merlo, president of the International Association of Sports Journalists, AIPS, main columnist of La Gazetta dello Sport: 

"Football was and will always be Pelé in every sense."

 Keir Rednage - World Soccer and Kicker journalist: 

„Pelé's greatness was that he was able to remain as powerful even after his sports career as Muhammad Ali once was."

Jozef Langer, general secretary of the Austrian Association of Sports Journalists, member of the executive committee of AIPS:

"For me, Pelé = football. In 1970, at the World Cup in Mexico, when I was 16 years old, I got my first impressions of him. Pelé has been the best in history for me ever since."

Charles Camenzuli, European President of AIPS, President of the Maltese Association of Sports Journalists, renowned television specialist:

"From my childhood until the beginning of my profession, Pelé was and remains my role model of a true sportsman. But I believe that legends never die, because they always live here with us. By the way, Pelé's death coincides with the first anniversary of the death of Diego Armando's brother, Hugo Maradona, and here the question arises again. Who is the greatest ever? There is no calculable answer to this.  

The imaginative play and juggling of the ball by Ferenc Puskás was certainly absorbed by the young Pelé, who won his first World Cup medal at the age of 17. There are similarities between the two, even though they played in different eras. The style of defending with the ball, the ability to start from scratch and, meanwhile, keep an eye on the opponent showed similarities between Puskás and Pelé, as in later years between a certain Diego Armando Maradona and the two other geniuses."

Read  the full Mandiner article

Author: Zsuzsa Csisztu

Photo: Ferenc Német (with Pelé Puskás)

This is how Viktor Orbán remembered the football legend:

"The Greatest Gone"

wrote the Prime Minister on his social media page.