Is Jimmy Magee full of himself ?

I'd wonder is he as knowledgeable as he makes out he is. He has come out with some ridiculously ignorant statements in the past while commentating.

Also had a weird obsession with the boxer Bernard Dunne if I remember correctly.

Jimmy was a great commentator and analyst in his time but he made the mistake of not retiring when his stock was high. Johnny Giles made the same mistake.

Aidric wrote: »

Jimmy was a great commentator and analyst in his time but he made the mistake of not retiring when his stock was high.

Just after the first Panhellenic Games then?

Had Michelle Smith as one of Irelands greatest sporting moments video. Jimmy is old school. Time moves on but not sure anyone is still calling him the Memory Man anymore.

I never thought of him as a great commentator on either soccerball or boxfighting

Whatever else you say about him he still seems to have gravitas. I saw him on the red carpet earlier this week in Zurich at the Ballon D'or. He looked shockingly pale but still displaying the eagerness of a cub reporter.

In a recent interview with Miriam O’Callaghan, the ‘Memory Man’ Magee explained how a 20 minute meeting ran into three-quarters of an hour as the two discussed their love of football.

Pelé revealed that he didn’t know the meaning of the nickname he had inherited as a schoolboy. It was Magee who proffered a hypothesis.

“I had an idea. I gave him a story that an Irish-speaking missionary priest was in Brazil in Pelé’s poor part where he was born and raised.”

Watching the young Edson play on the street with a ball of paper, the priest remarked on the “buachaill ag imirt peile (boy playing football),” and on hearing the phrase, the local women began calling the boy “Pelé.”

Magee himself labelled the tall tale ‘a cock-and bull story’ but a plausible one, and Pelé agreed that it was indeed possible.

According to Magee, the theory appeared in a subsequent book by Pelé, and the account is referred to in many articles on the origin of the player’s famous nickname.

The more generally accepted version, however, was repeated in the 2006 autobiography ‘Pelé.’
young pele

Pelé images: @Pele

Originally called ‘Dico’ by his family, the story started with a fellow team member of Edson’s father João Ramos do Nascimento at the Vasco de São Lourenço football club in Minas Gerais. The goalkeeper was known as “Bilé” and as a boy, Edson (named after Thomas Edison) would watch the team training, sometimes standing in goal pretending to defend a shot.

It was the youngster’s mispronunciation of the word ” Bilé” to something resembling “Pilé that saw the name stick. When the family subsequently moved to Bauru, a class-mate began to tease the young Edson with the nickname becoming “Pelé”

In later years, the icon told a German newspaper that he hated the label so much, he punched the classmate who came up with it, earning a two-day suspension from school.

“Over the years I’ve learnt to live with two persons in my heart,” he said. “One is Edson, who has fun with his friends and family; the other is the football player Pelé. I didn’t want the name. Pelé sounds like baby-talk in Portuguese.”

It later emerged that the word means ‘miracle’ in the Hebrew language, a description that seems apt for the Brazilian boy who embarked on an extraordinary rise to global stardom.

Also known as Perola Negra (the Black Pearl), Pelé joined Santos FC as a 15-year-old and was promoted to the senior side after just one year, scoring on his début against Corinthians. Ten months after signing professionally, the teenager was called up to the Brazilian national team. Catapulted onto the world stage, he went on to become the player regarded by many as the greatest of all time, and the name Pelé became synonymous with the beautiful game itself.

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I'd wonder is he as knowledgeable as he makes out he is. He has come out with some ridiculously ignorant statements in the past while commentating.

Also had a weird obsession with the boxer Bernard Dunne if I remember correctly.

He did indeed and when Bernard was getting beaten in his title defence, Jimmy was still calling it in his favour. I lost all respect for him then.

Boards would complain about god himself if he was from RTE. Nice happy old man smiling away on the tv, everyone sticks the boot in.