(foto: Twitter)
The shirt worn by 17-year-old Pelé during Brazil’s first World Cup triumph has become the most valuable piece of memorabilia linked to the football legend.
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One of the most important shirts in football history has a new owner. The Brazil shirt worn by Pelé in the 1958 World Cup final has been sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $4.88 million.
The price represents a new record for an item connected to Pelé, the Brazilian icon who remains the only player to have won the World Cup three times.
Pelé wore the famous yellow number 10 shirt when Brazil defeated hosts Sweden 5-2 in the final in Solna. Aged just 17, he scored twice and became the youngest player to find the net in a World Cup final.
His first goal, a delicate flick over a defender followed by a volley, remains one of the defining images of the tournament. His second completed Brazil’s victory and confirmed the arrival of a footballer who would become the sport’s first truly global superstar.
It was the first of Pelé’s three World Cup titles. He would also lift the trophy in 1962 and 1970, building a legacy that has survived every generational argument about football’s greatest player.
After the final, Pelé gave the shirt to his Brazil teammate Dida. It later passed through Dida’s family and was displayed at the Museu dos Esportes in Rio de Janeiro before entering a private collection. The shirt had not been publicly offered for more than two decades.
Sotheby’s described the item as the shirt Pelé wore on the night his reign at the top of world football began.
“This is the garment worn by one of the greatest footballers in history on the night his reign began,” said Brahm Wachter, Sotheby’s head of modern collectibles.
The final price makes it the second-most expensive football shirt ever sold at auction. The record remains with Diego Maradona’s shirt from Argentina’s 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England, which Sotheby’s sold for $9.3 million in 2022.
That was the shirt worn by Maradona when he scored both the controversial “Hand of God” goal and the celebrated “Goal of the Century”.
Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals later surpassed Maradona’s shirt in the wider market for game-worn sporting apparel, selling for $10.1 million.
Neither is the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia ever sold. That distinction belongs to Babe Ruth’s jersey from the 1932 World Series, which fetched $24.1 million in 2024.
Pelé’s shirt may sit below those items in the auction rankings, but its football significance is difficult to measure in dollars. It was worn during the match in which a 17-year-old boy helped Brazil become world champions for the first time and announced himself to the entire world.