All those huddled under that temporary tent of green and gold were wishing the best for one of the game's legends who, at the age of 82, is receiving palliative care in a São Paulo hospital - and is now, thankfully, appearing to be doing better than he was earlier this month.

The fans' tribute was backed up by the players, who brandished a poster with Pelé's name and picture on it before their round-of-16 match against South Korea.

The 1966 World Cup finals in England were my first experience of football. Thus my generation was touched by the tragic notion that victory for our nation was, and would be, the norm. To be continued…

Although we didn’t get to see too much of him on the TV, Pelé was someone talked and written about with reverence. People called him the greatest player in the world. How could he be? What about Bobby Charlton?

Charlton was great all right. And he personally thought his one-time Manchester United and England team-mate Duncan Edwards, who perished long before his prime in the Munich Air Crash aged 21, was the greatest player he had known.

But he readily acknowledged the unique wonder of Pelé, who had already contributed to successive Brazilian World Cup wins, the first in 1958 as an audacious 17-year-old who scored a wonder goal in the final, the second as an established force whose involvement as a player ended after the second group match because of a groin injury.

At the 1966 World Cup Pelé's brilliance was cynically scythed and hacked at in the group matches by, in particular, Dobromir Zhechev of Bulgaria and Portugal’s Jose Morais and he ended up as walking wounded in a Brazilian side that failed to reach the knock-out stages.

The reverence remained. In 1969 much was made of Pelé's scoring of his 1,000th goal, from a penalty for Santos in the Maracana Stadium. A report of that mighty achievement was already dutifully pasted into my football scrapbooks by the time the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico came around.

This time Pelé's genius had full play and was celebrated and acknowledged accordingly.

The family up the road from us had - a colour television. And through the tentative link that my younger brother was friends with one of the boys in that household I inveigled myself in front of this magical cube of technology to watch Brazil’s opening group match against Czechoslovakia.

Pelé, who had been persuaded out of international retirement by the late replacement as Brazil coach, his old team-mate Mario Zagallo, didn’t score.

But the way he moved, the excitement he created, the colour - technicolour on that day - he brought to the occasion - you could feel it. That attempt to score from the halfway line, as audacious as anything he had tried as a 17-year-old newcomer, was unforgettable. Nobody did those things. But he did.

In the tense semi-final against bitter rivals Uruguay, he tried to beat the keeper by pushing the ball one way and running round the other side. Nobody did those things. But he did.

Neither effort ended in a goal, but that was not the point. Pelé was an artist who had created a new way to paint.

Next came the epic match against the defending champions of England. If only Jeff Astle hadn’t missed that goal. If only Alan Ball...ah well. England had lost with honour - we know that feeling pretty well by now - and Brazil had been worthy winners, despite Gordon Banks's save for the ages of an early header which Pelé said he was certain was a goal.

The only actual goal came from Jairzinho - but the perfect invitation rolled to him had come, naturally, from Pelé, who had the England defence expecting him to shoot himself.

In the final against Italy, it was he who opened the scoring, with another towering header that this time found its target, and he replicated his contribution against England as his casual but artful ball out to the left allowed his captain, Carlos Alberto, to smash home the coup de grace in a 4-1 win.

Re-reading Pelé's autobiography (Pelé - The Autobiography, Simon & Schuster) this week, it is surprising how relatively little space he gave to his World Cup campaigns. But the recollections given are vivid.

The first of his two goals in the 1958 World Cup final against the Swedish hosts.

"I made it 3-1 after shouting to Nilson Santos to cross a long centre to me. 

"As it came in I caught it first on my chest, then let it drop as the defender Gustavsson came at me. 

"Flipping the ball over his head I ran round him and volleyed home the shot. 

"Though I say so myself, it was a nice goal - and a goal in a World Cup final! 

"It is one of my all-time favourite goals - because I was so young, but also because no one had seen a goal like this before…"

In 1962, after the recurrence of his groin injury midway through the second group match against Czechoslovakia, which would be his last match in the competition, he was obliged to continue as there were then no substitutes.

"I still had to hobble through the rest of this match, probably getting clattered at every turn by what was a very tough and physical Czech side. 

"But then something remarkable happened…I felt as though I was handed a lifeline by the generosity and spirit of the Czech players, three of them in particular."

He went on to cite Josef Masopust, Jan Popluhar and the full back, Jan Lala, who, rather than "going in for the kill", chose just to "gently neutralise" his involvement without tackling him.

After the climactic third World Cup win, which meant Brazil got to keep the Jules Rimet trophy for good, Pelé recalled: "The intensity of emotion as Carlos Alberto lifted the trophy above his head, tears of joy in his eyes, was like nothing I had ever known, except perhaps watching Bellini do the same thing in 1958."

Yet, he harboured one regret about his fabled World Cup career. 

"I would have liked to have scored from a bicycle kick….it’s funny, but the goals that I missed in 1970 are remembered more than the ones that I scored - the shot from halfway, Banks's save, and the dummy round the goalkeeper.

"I would have preferred not to have made any of those moves but to have scored with a bicycle kick. 

"It’s a personal thing, without importance really, but it’s what I feel."

Somehow, I think the world will forgive him for that shortfall…