Pele, one of the greatest footballers of all time to walk the earth, breathed his last on Wednesday, December 29, after a long battle with colon cancer in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Soon after his death, his career highlights went viral on social media, including a controversial Viagra commercial that he had shot for Pfizer, which has attracted a lot of criticism at the time. 

Many football fans have suggested that Pele tarnished the purity of the game’s legacy through commercialism as he promoted everything from Coca-Cola to Viagra. The most controversial among these was his promotion of Viagra, which took many of his fans by shock. 

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Watch the commercial here: 

However, Pele had insisted at the time that he personally never took the drug himself but wanted to smash the taboo around erectile dysfunction.

“At the beginning, I was surprised [to be approached by Pfizer] and in Brazil a lot of friends of mine told me to be careful and to find out what is the real message, what is the real campaign. But when I was in New York I got all the information on the situation all over the world and I thought that it is good to be part of this,” he said at the time. 

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While he was widely ridiculed for endorsing such a product, attaching his name actually helped, destigmatize a problem that many are afraid to acknowledge. Pelé talked about how Viagra helps men take such health problems seriously. 

“In the campaign, we talk about taboo. As men, we don’t talk too much about our problem,” Pelé said. “I thought this was cultural, but it is not. We started the campaign in Japan. The Japanese are very different to Brazilians or Europeans. They were different but the same. This problem of ED is universal. It doesn’t matter about the culture.”