[Saba Sports News] Recently, a match-worn jersey worn by Pelé, the King of Football, in the 1958 FIFA World Cup final was sold for $4.9 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. This shirt has become the second most expensive match jersey ever sold in football history, only trailing the jersey worn by another football legend Diego Maradona during the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England. In that game, Maradona scored both the iconic “Goal of the Century” and the infamous “Hand of God” strike; his shirt fetched £7.1 million at auction back in 2022. After 10 rounds of bidding involving more than five prospective buyers, the hammer finally fell on the 1958 World Cup final jersey. It also marks the highest transaction price among all Pelé memorabilia ever sold at auction. Notably, the same jersey was previously put up for auction in 2004, when it changed hands for $105,600. Twenty-two years on, its value has surged more than 40 times.
The editor believes that in the 1958 World Cup final, the then 17-year-old Pelé bagged a brace against Sweden and led Brazil to claim its first World Cup title in history. This was also the first of Pelé’s three World Cup championships. To this day, Pelé still holds the record as the youngest goalscorer in a World Cup final.