Recommended Reading: Pele's Entropy

Grantland's Brian Phillips on his ambivalence about Pele and the reason for why the superstar can't really help being the way he's been (corporate shill, cranky opiner, etc.) in retirement:

You make people feel good, which makes you feel good, and you see that this is a kind of lovely feedback loop, that if you just keep smiling and talking about yourself the whole tone of the room lifts. You're like a drug, essentially. Only then one day you retire, and the day after you retire you're exactly the same person, and the week after, and the month after, only somehow something is different, some underlying universe-dynamic has gone very slightly wrong, so of course you try harder to compensate.
- John C.L. Morgan