The last time I saw him in person, he was behind the counter of a Subway in Central London, trying to fit a salad into a sandwich.
The Brazilian football legend had not fallen on hard times, it was a publicity stunt by the US fast food company, with whom he had an endorsement deal.
The smile on his face when he spotted me among the scrum of journalists was due to the fact that he and I had already met a lot. I was fortunate enough to get a one-to-one interview, but my favorite memory of that day was that Pele looked great at 74 years old.
I told him that everyone was worried about the hospital business.
Did you know that I was born in the town of Tres Coracoes? He said it was difficult to put someone who has three hearts in the ground.
I was worried that he wasn't going to be around for a long time after he looked so frail at the awards ceremony.
The fact that he had lost a kidney in the 1970s due to the battering he received during his 21-year professional career made it even worse.
I wondered what had just happened after our paths crossed. It was like being in the presence of a happy Avenger.
The man who was born as Edson Arantes do Nascimento was the greatest player of all time.
John Lennon once said that "rock and roll" should have been called "Chuck Berry" for his influence on the musical genre.
He was only 17 years old when Brazil won the first of their three World Cup titles.
He was a part of a Brazil side that won the title in Mexico with flair and is still considered the best team ever assembled.
Italy's Tarcisio Burgnich was one of the defenders who man-marked the Brazilian in the final.
I told myself before the game that he was just like everyone else. I wasn't right.
He scored one and set up two more in that game as Brazil won the World Cup. He scored more than 1200 goals in his career.
Andy Warhol, the late US artist, changed his famous quote about the nature of fame after seeing the impact that the soccer player had.
"Pele will have 15 centuries instead of 15 minutes of fame, because he was one of the few who disagreed with my theory," Warhol said.
Growing up in Brazil made it impossible to ignore the stories of the player who had already retired from international duty.
In addition to helping Brazil become the world's most successful footballing country, Pele, a black man, did something even more significant: he rose to the status of national treasure in a land with a shameful past of slavery and segregation that still exists today.
He is the most famous person in Brazil. He is the first name people mention when I tell them where I'm from.
His critics as well. Those who thought he should have spoken out against the military regime that ruled Brazil with an iron fist between 1964 and 1985 were not the only ones.
None of his peers had his charisma, even though they seemed to have turned a blind eye to the oppression.
During the years of military rule, football players wouldn't have made a difference in the human rights violations that took place, according to a new documentary.
I would be lying if I said I knew nothing about the violations. We didn't know what was going on.
In protest against the military, he refused to come back from retirement to play in the 1974 World Cup.
In his playing days or after retirement, there was no active engagement with more formal efforts against racism in Brazil.
He was heavily criticized for saying that he had suffered enough racial abuse in his playing days to stop every game he had ever taken part in.
The arrest of his son, Edson, for involvement in drugtrafficking, and his refusal to acknowledge his daughter, who was born after an affair, marked the personal life of the man.
He didn't know how many children I had because he had so many affairs.
After a brief stint in the US' first professional football league, the Brazilian legend hung up his boots.
When Brazil won the 1994 Men's World Cup, he jumped up and down in the press box, still wearing his headset, but his involvement with the game was limited to TV punditry.
He served as Brazil's Minister for Sport from 1995-98.
In retrospect, it was a brave move to advertise medicine for Erectile Function in the 2000s, as it led to mockery, but it was a good move at the time.
Even though he was a go to source for quotes for national and international media, he never really measured his words.
"Pele is a poet with his mouth shut" was the opinion of Brazil's World Cup winning forward.
He could go off mark predictions.
The World Cup would be won by an African team before the 21st century, according to a prediction made in the 70s.
After Argentina qualified for the 1994 World Cup, he tipped the South American nation to win it, but they lost to the US in the first round.
He fought back with the punches.
He told me in Berlin in 2006 that he had a right to speak his mind because of his history in the game.
He launched into a rant against everyone, including Diego Maradona, who he felt was being unfairly critiqued. The King had already made it clear that he was not a journalist and the article would never see the light of day.
When Brazil was knocked out of the World Cup in the quarter-finals by France, the only newspaper article about it was given to me.
Since the arrival of Lionel Messi, many have been tempted to say that he had knocked out the greatest footballer of all time, Pel. The Brazilian legend didn't think that was correct.
I could score with both feet and Messi uses his left more. He needs to score a lot of goals, according to the legend.
I wish I could tell him that he was still without three World Cup titles.
The King used to like that. That laughter will be missed by me.
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