CAPE TOWN, July 19: Thirty years after retiring from football, legendary striker Pele took the field at the age of 66 on Wednesday in a celebrity match for South African statesman Nelson Mandela's 89th birthday.

But the Brazilian star was not kitted out for play and spent just a few minutes on the pitch of Cape Town's Newlands stadium in a light-coloured safari suit, jogging around the centre circle alongside Cameroonian striker Samuel Eto'o before ceremoniously kicking off for a Rest of the World XI team.

He was applauded enthusiastically by soccer fans who had turned out in their thousands for the match against an Africa XI, especially when he displayed some fancy footwork with a ball that crossed his path as he was making his way off the field.

Pele scored more than 1,000 goals in a career spanning two decades, starting at club level at the tender age of 15 and playing his first World Cup for Brazil aged 17 in 1958.

He scored nearly 100 goals at the international level.

Pele was the star celebrity present at Wednesday's match in honour of Mandela, South Africa's first black president and a Nobel peace prize laureate.

Before play started, he helped hold aloft a banner displaying the match's central theme: “Say no to racism” — key among Mandela's causes.

The African team, boasting players like Eto'o, Ghana's Abedi Pele and Liberian George Weah, wore white gear, while their opponents, with the likes of France's Christian Karembeu, South African-born Liverpool Leeds defender Lucas Radebe and Dutchman Ruud Gullit in their ranks, were kitted out in black.

Extolling the unifying virtues of the sport that made him famous, Pele recalled how the King of Sweden had come down to the field to shake his hand after the 1958 World Cup, when the player was just 17.

“It made me understand what football does for the world; it puts people together. That is what Mr. Mandela has done for the whole world,” said Pele.—AFP