A.RICARDO / Shutterstock.com
Industry: Sports – Football
Net worth: $100 million (£77 million)
A sure sign of success is when you don’t need a last name to identify yourself. That is exactly the case of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known to all of us as simply as Pelé! Born in 1940 in Brazil, Pele grew up in poverty and developed his skills by kicking around a stuffed sock.
His talent did not go unnoticed and he was signed up with a professional football club by age 15, going on to dazzle the planet at the 1958 World Cup, scoring multiple times wearing Brazil’s national colours.
His long and successful career earned him the FIFA Player of the Century title in 1999 along with Argentina’s Diego Maradona. With 1,281 goals in 1,363 games, Pelé is a living legend in the sport, a declared national treasure in Brazil and one of his games was rumoured to be the reason for a 48-hour ceasefire in the Nigerian Civil War.
