Pelé to attend reconciliation meeting with FIFA's Blatter and Brazilian President Rousseff

By Andrew Warshaw

March 14 – In a clever diplomatic move, Pelé (pictured), Brazil’s greatest ever footballing icon, will attend Friday’s clear-the-air talks between FIFA President Sepp Blatter and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff following the recent row over the 2014 World Cup preparations.

Last week, the FIFA boss wrote to Rousseff requesting a personal hearing to patch up differences after apologising for comments made by his number two, general secretary Jérôme Valcke who had publicly slammed Brazil’s slow progress by declaring organisers needed “a kick up the backside”.

Blatter will travel to Brasília to try to patch up differences and will now be joined by Pelé, last year appointed as the official Brazil 2014 ambassador.

“We will discuss the status of preparations and what needs to be done over the next few months to achieve the common goal of FIFA and the Brazilian Government to stage a great FIFA Confederations Cup in June 2013 and a successful 2014 FIFA World Cup,” Blatter said in a statement.

The announcement came two days after Ricardo Teixeira quit as President of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) and head of Brazil 2014.

Pelé had a notoriously long-running feud with Teixeira (pictured far right) who, remarkably, failed to invite him to the draw for the World Cup qualifying competition in Rio de Janeiro last year, infuriating fans and sparking a diplomatic row.

Rousseff (pictured second from left) immediately stepped in and personally appointed Pelé as the country’s official World Cup ambassador to make sure he had a key role to play.

The animosity between Pelé and Teixeira goes back to the early 1990s when Pelé was critical of Teixeira’s then father-in-law João Havelange, President of FIFA at the time.

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