I think people who don't know anything about football know the name Pele. They might know nothing about him, but his name has become common parlance for being untouchable.
Beckham by contrast is famous but i bet a lot of people don't know he was a footballer.
I dont know man.
Football is a sport and even when I was getting in to Football first time I never knew who Pele was until football had become one of my religious habits. I had to study that Pele was viewed as the greatest of the sport but just because he was that didnt mean he was the most famous off the bat.
Beckham was everywhere inside the sport and outside the sport. His haircuts, him on the news, he arguably had one or the biggest/famous relationships in a career with Victoria Beckham of Spice girls, the news from his problems at United, from him going from the best known club in the world with arguably the best manager of all time to another like Real Madrid during the famous period of the Galacticos which was a definition of Beckham himself, his perfumes and him being a good looking person that people wanted to look like and live like etc.
I remember going to foreign countries in the west and they knew nothing about the sport until I bought Beckham in to a conversation. Even if they didnt know who he was properly, I'd see kids wearing his face on shirts because they basically viewed him as a fashion and a design of the eastern community which they wanted to partly emulate.
I think the footballing community would know that Pele was a bigger influence that Beckham with his records & gameplay - but that comes from knowing the sport itself.
If I had to ask a random woman to talk to me about Pele or Beckham- I'd get more of a conversation out of Beckham because he was bigger and more famous than just football. A virgin woman who hadn't been with another man and had no interest in football whatsoever- would they really know about Pele over Beckham? I doubt it.
Beckham was famous for the footballing community but also the community that were away from football aswell because Beckham wanted that as part of his marketing.
I mean I talk about the eastern community but consider Beckham's move to the MLS. Whilst I'm not sure, Bekcham bought a hype towards football in that region like a second coming of Michael Jordon for this sport. Whilst Pele was near the same continent and would have had an influence on football no doubt - I dont think it bought as much attention as Beckham did because he grew in a period where multimedia was growing and Beckham worked for that attention on Internet, Journalism, fashion, radio and more.
