When Pelé nearly became a Red

He was a three-time World Cup winner, voted the best player of the 20th century and is still considered by many to be the greatest footballer of all time. FC Bayern also once tried to lure Pelé to the Isar, and president Roland Endler almost succeeded. To mark the anniversary of Pelé's passing on 29 December, the FC Bayern members' magazine '51' takes a look back.

That blasted thing! It was just so sticky, but Barbara Götte really couldn't have known that. There's always a first time, and the six-year-old girl was enjoying the first chewing gum of her life in the Endler family's garden in the Solln district of Munich. A real treat - until it lost its flavour. But because Roland Endler was giving a speech in honour of the special guest he had welcomed as president of FC Bayern, Götte couldn't just get up. So what should she do? Hold the chewing gum in her hand for a moment? A very, very bad idea.

Götte can laugh today when she relates the story, but at the time, she stresses again and again, "I was so terribly embarrassed". Because once the applause for Endler had died down and he declared the meal ready, her fingers would not come apart. The family's housekeeper had to use a knife and acetone to help the girl remove the sticky mass: "We were in the toilet for 20 minutes, everyone was laughing their heads off." But no one was angry, they were more amused - and the little incident couldn't dampen the good mood anyway. Because the man who was the centre of attention that evening was, in Götte's words, "shy, modest and extremely friendly". His name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as: Pelé.

"The most concrete offer was from Bayern“

The Brazilian football icon would have turned 84 on 23 October this year, and football fans around the world once again commemorated the footballing wizard and his unique magic on the pitch. But Barbara Götte has very different memories of the striker, who remains one of the greatest to this day. When the news of his passing spread around the world in December 2022, the Munich native remembered that she still had a photo at home. So why not share it with the club where her father, Dr Karl Wachtel, was once vice-president - and in that role at the end of the 1960s was actually involved in trying to convince Pelé to move to FC Bayern?

The photo, which Götte sent by e-mail, shows a group of smartly dressed men. Among them: president Endler, vice-president Wachtel and representatives of Santos FC. There was a great atmosphere, with the two parties getting on splendidly. And the agreement they reached was particularly satisfying for the Munich faction. The mission, which was recorded in the club news in March with the short announcement "Our president is currently on a business trip to Brazil and will not return to Munich until Easter week", was a big one - and it would begin with this trip to Brazil. The management duo returned with the promise that Pelé, later ‘FIFA Player of the 20th Century’, would see for himself whether he liked Germany and could imagine living in the Bavarian capital.

"I had offers from Milan and Madrid, but the most concrete one was from Bayern," Pelé had let slip during a talk show on the subscription TV channel Sky in 2012, long after his career had ended - causing a huge sensation. The news that perhaps the best footballer of all time had almost played in a team that Franz Beckenbauer, Sepp Maier and Gerd Müller later joined was a bombshell for many, but not for Götte. After all, as a little girl, she virtually witnessed it all happening, not only when Pelé visited the Endlers in their garden, but also before and after then.

Götte still vividly remembers the tape her father used to play on a continuous loop at the end of the 1960s. "Every evening," she says, "my father learnt Portuguese after work. Specifically for the negotiations." When the big trip across the Atlantic came up, "he was very good at it. That certainly impressed the other party." Endler, who was downright obsessed with the idea of luring Pelé to the Isar, had convinced his vice-president Wachtel (both were in office from 1958 to 1962) to accompany him. A football-mad entrepreneur with a soft spot for Brazil was a perfect fit. Even Pelé himself couldn't miss what was obvious: "Roland was a real fan of mine."

So much so, in fact, that he wanted to get serious, at a time when Pelé was already a World Cup winner but still had the longest period of his unique career ahead of him. Götte still remembers the summer break in 1959, when Pelé answered the call from Munich and spent a few weeks in Solln. "The first time," she says, "the young lad had left Brazil," and that's exactly how he behaved. He was "sometimes almost uncomfortable" with all the fuss being made of him. Just 18 years old, still quite awkward and yet being courted by an entire club. The star enjoyed the time, but quickly realised what he later revealed: "I didn't want to leave Brazil. I felt at home there." Götte puts a name to the feeling that had crept up on him: "Homesickness."

Endler financed Pelé's honeymoon

Pelé's departure hurt, because Endler and many others had really gone the extra mile. But the fact that it wasn't down to Munich, FC Bayern or even themselves was something the then strong management duo of our club were able to witness over the course of the next two decades. Pelé ultimately remained with "his" Santos FC for almost 20 years, until 1975; it was only towards the end of his career, as a ten-time domestic champion, two-time Intercontinental Cup and three-time World Cup winner that he was drawn to the New York Cosmos (and Beckenbauer). But the contact with Endler never broke off - a bond had been forged.

Years later, Pelé recounted the following: "When Roland heard I was getting married, he invited me to Germany for my honeymoon and kept saying: You have to come and play for FC Bayern too." It didn't work out there either, but that didn't stop Endler from maintaining their special friendship. Endler gave Pelé his first Mercedes, which Götte still remembers: "Azure blue." And Pelé accepted an invitation to go on a special tour of Europe with his recently wed first wife Rosemeri dos Reis Cholbi. The couple stayed in Endler's private homes in Solln and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, visited the welding factory of Endler's company in Neuss, travelled to Riccione in Italy and also stopped off in Austria and France. The highlight: a private audience with Pope Paul VI.

By this time, Endler was no longer president of FC Bayern. When he stepped down in 1962, according to the club news due to "excessive workload", Endler made the announcement on an evening when Brazil once again played a central role. Joan Mendonga Falcon, president of the Brazilian Football Association, was on a trip to Munich when the plans were revealed at a large dinner. Such occasions were not uncommon at the time, as the connection between FC Bayern and Brazil had in fact become increasingly close during Endler's time, even without the Pelé transfer.

Pelé absent from friendly in Munich

The managers back then were focused on international football, with Endler and his closest colleague Wachtel thinking far beyond Germany's borders. And thanks to the duo - who only managed the club together for four years, but set FC Bayern up financially and in sporting terms for the Bundesliga, which was launched in 1963 - there were regular friendlies at that time. In 1959, SC Corinthians Paulista visited Munich, followed by Esporte Clube Bahia in 1960. Then, in 1961, Santos FC arrived, the club Endler had long been an honorary member of, just as he had been of the Brazilian football association.

The match against Pelé's club Santos was of course the highlight. Even though the great star didn't travel to Munich in the summer of 1961 due to a shoulder injury, the floodlit game electrified the whole of FC Bayern. A whole four pages - a real rarity - were written in the club news, the introductory text underlining the mindset of Endler and his colleagues. They read: "Footballers don't need interpreting services. The ball is the teacher of a global esperanto." And it continued: "It was also the cosmopolitan nature of football that forged bonds of friendship from Munich all the way across the ocean to South America."

Endler had already invited the delegation to his home in Grainau the day before the match, and the Brazilian flag fluttered alongside the Bavarian flag at a lunchtime banquet in the Hotel Marktplatz in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. "The warmth," said Endler in his speech, "was a highlight in my life, even for someone like me who spends a lot of time travelling around the world." Glasses were raised "to the football friendship between FC Bayern Munich and Santos FC!" The match on 17 May ended in a 3-2 defeat for Bayern, but it was a close-run thing. The "Münchner Merkur" wrote: "The football artists of Santos FC are also only human. This realisation made us like them even more."

So they all had a bit of Pelé in them. A man who left his mark in Munich without ever settling here. Incidentally, he did actually make one appearance on the pitch, in 1967, when he played with Santos against TSV 1860 Munich at the Grünwalder Stadion. Final score: 5-4 for Pelé's side.

He was still in contact with Endler at the time. He would regularly visit Munich for sponsor engagements. And a photo of him and landlord Heigl still hangs in the traditional "Sollner Hof" restaurant today. Barbara Götte remembers exactly what the former Bayern managers liked to say whenever they would pass by this photo in the stairwell: "Look! He's not homesick there!"

The article appeared in the November issue of the FC Bayern members' magazine '51”'. Check out our interview with Michael Olise in the current issue: