Race footballer around surgery (6)
I believe the answer is:
people
'race' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'footballer around surgery' is the wordplay.
'footballer' becomes 'pele' (I have seen 'Brazilian footballer ' mean 'pele' so perhaps 'footballer' could also mean 'pele').
'around' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'surgery' becomes 'op' (short for operation).
'pele' placed around 'op' is 'PEOPLE'.
(Other definitions for people that I've seen before include "Population" , "See 6" , "Newspaper" , "Mortals" , "Men, women and children" .)