Pelé, a Name That Became Shorthand for Perfection

The best gauge of what Pelé meant to soccer is that he was synonymous with excellence even before people saw him play.

Pelé in 1970, when he became the only man to win three World Cups.Credit...Associated PressOf all the myriad things Pelé did — the thousand-plus goals he scored and the array of records he set and the innumerable, immeasurable moments of wonder he conjured — the one that is the most famous, the most familiar, may also have been the most ordinary, the most mundane.

Pelé’s crowning glory was a pass, one played with a nonchalant ease in the fading minutes of the World Cup final in 1970, a moment of glorious, acoustic simplicity from a player whose name had been made and whose…