le jour où le “Roi” a joué contre les Girondins de Bordeaux, au parc Lescure
It was March 4, 1973, a Saturday and that was the event. Pelé, 32, landed in Gironde with his club Santos. Him, but also his Brazilian teammates, 1970 world champions, like Carlos Alberto, Clodoaldo and Edu. One of the many matches that Santos played at the time to expose the best player in the world, in long promotional tours in Europe that filled the coffers of the club. The arrival of this Santos, and obviously of his number 10 remains “a major event in the history of Parc Lescure”, judge Laurent Brun, freelance journalist, author of several books on the history of the Girondins and the Chaban-Delmas stadium (name of Parc Lescure since 2001).
The career of the triple world champion (1958, 1962, 1970) therefore temporarily passed through Bordeaux, during his last season at Santos. So when they had the opportunity to see it, “Bordeaux jumped at the chance”, remembers Laurent Brun. An influx of 25,000 spectators which may seem modest, but at the time, with fewer places in the stands because of the velodrome, that was a lot.
In the audience, Bernard Sanchez. Now retired in Andernos, he was at the time a young 14-year-old footballer, licensed at Bouscat. “We came to live the 1970 World Cup, where Pelé had been extraordinary”, he remembers. “I only had Pelé shoes, the model from Puma”. From the match, he keeps the memory of an action, “Pelé in front of the front stand, who suddenly crosses towards the main stand for a guy that no one had seen except him. The whole stadium was standing”.
Fight for Pelé’s shirt
And of the post-match, Bernard Sanchez remembers a fierce struggle with “50 or 60 games” to recover Pelé’s jersey that the “King” had left on the pitch. “We left like shells, everyone threw themselves on the jersey and pulled it in all directions to get a relic. They charged, and they gave the jersey to a smaller kid than the others.s”.
Opposite, the Girondins de Bordeaux are not in the best period in the history of the club, which would happen ten years later. The people of Bordeaux are “needy people, very honored to play against Pelé”, says Laurent Brun, with notably in the workforce the goalkeeper Philippe Bergeroo, Jean Gallice, Philippe Goubet, or the former Girondin Didier Couécou, “on loan from Nantes for this match”. A great absentee, Alain Giresse, who in his year of military service, played little with the first team and “had been sent to play in Limoges with the reserve team”. Final score, 2-2, double from Philippe Goubet for the Girondins, and a goal from Pelé, of course, for Santos. One of his 1,281, all games combined, in his career.