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Home > The Football Show on Off The Ball > SLIDING DOORS: How Pele could have ended up at... Hannover? And how a Nazi ice-cream machine salesman was at the heart of the deal
Podcast: The Football Show on Off The Ball
Episode:

SLIDING DOORS: How Pele could have ended up at... Hannover? And how a Nazi ice-cream machine salesman was at the heart of the deal
Category: Sports & Recreation
Duration: 00:12:49
Publish Date: 2026-02-09 09:30:00
Description:

Welcome to a time-travel podcast diving into football’s greatest almost moments — the transfers that came within touching distance of reality, Richie McCormack's Sliding Doors.

Sliding Doors goes beyond rumours and gossip to uncover deals that were genuinely on the table

Each episode explores how one decision could have reshaped clubs, careers, and the entire football landscape

From whispered negotiations to official bids, this is the anatomy of football’s biggest “what ifs”

Think Michael Laudrup to Liverpool, Robert Lewandowski to Blackburn… and yes, Ronaldo to Rangers

This episode takes us back to 1964, newly promoted Hannover 96 came astonishingly close to signing Pelé — the greatest player the game has ever seen — for the infant Bundesliga.

As club legend Friedel Schicks moved toward retirement, a replacement was quietly discussed that sounded almost unbelievable: Pelé was supposed to succeed him at the heart of Hannover’s team.

The man pushing the idea wasn’t a scout or an agent, but board member Hans-David Ziegra — an ice-cream machine salesman with strong Brazilian connections and a past far darker than most in German football.

Ziegra’s history included Nazi Party membership, intelligence work across Europe, post-war CIA scrutiny, and decades-long ties to Brazil, all of which helped fuel the extraordinary attempt to lure Pelé to Germany.

Hannover could afford the move — Bundesliga wages soon eclipsed what Pelé earned at Santos — but Pelé’s status as a national treasure made any transfer politically and culturally explosive.

With Brazil under military rule in 1964, Pelé chose to stay, later admitting talks with Hannover had taken place but that leaving Santos at such a volatile moment was never realistic.

Pelé never played in the Bundesliga, and German football went another way — but this forgotten near-miss invites one tantalising question: how differently might football history look if the greatest player of all time had arrived in Germany at the dawn of the Bundesliga?

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