In my roast of Cristiano Ronaldo yesterday, I reiterated my view that - although the G.O.A.T. debate is fundamentally rather silly - there can only ever be one clear greatest football player of all-time, and that has to be Pelé. (I have spoken about my admiration for his gifts before, here and here.)
I would say that Pelé owns this title, and will always hold on to it - even if others should eventually attain the same level of skill or lasting impact (and I don't think anyone has yet; Maradona and Messi have come close-ish, but not really...) - simply because he was the first. He was the first true global super-star of football (at the dawn of the modern mass media era), he was largely responsible for making it most popular televised sport in the world. Every great player since has been measured against Pelé, has been inspired by Pelé, has tried to emulate Pelé. He is the benchmark of greatness in our game; and even if someone one day should - improbably - exceed that benchmark, that will not displace the player who set the benchmark.
The list of his unique achievements in the game is long: the youngest ever to play in, and score in, and win a World Cup Final; the first player to score in two, three, and four consecutive World Cups; one of the first players to play in two World Cup Finals and one of a very few (at the time) to have won the World Cup twice (the others were some of his Brazilian team-mates of 1958 and 1962, and, I suppose, a few of the Italians from the double pre-War victory in the 1930s); the only player to play a dominant role in two World Cup Final wins; one of the highest, if not the highest goals-per-game ratio ever recorded across a full career.
It's difficult to count his exact number of appearances and goals and so on, because records were only kept on paper - if at all - back in the '50s and '60s, and often have been subsequently lost or destroyed; many of the statistics have to be painstakingly reconstructed from brief newspaper reports. And there were many more specially arranged 'exhibition games' back in those days, which, while not part of formal competitions, were not usually regarded as 'friendlies' in the modern understanding. So, exact numbers may be a little nebulous and uncertain; the current consensus seems to be that he racked up 757 goals in 831 senior games. But that might be a very conservative figure; I have seen several other estimates that put both his games and goals tallies near to, if not above 1,000, if you count all of his youth team tournaments and later 'unofficial' games. However many total games you want to acknowledge as 'counting', it's clear that he maintained a career average of close to a goal a game - in what was, for the time, an exceptionally long career. And there was, inevitably, a considerable drop-off in his later years; in his youthful prime, he was managing well over a goal per game, in both club and international football. I don't think anyone else has ever done that (Cristiano is down around 65%; and that really is exceptional - just... not as good as Pelé). And he wasn't even an outright striker - not a centre-forward, but more of a support striker or attacking midfielder (what in South America is often called the ponta de lança, usually the most advanced of a highly fluid group of progressive midfield players who support the attack).
And of course, 'assists' weren't really a recognised term back in his day, not even a concept. It was an idea borrowed from American sport that only began to gain fitful traction in football from the early 1990s, and didn't really become a regular feature of life in the English Premier League until about 20 years ago. So, again, the records have to be compiled mostly from old match reports, which often fail to discuss in detail how a goal came to be scored. You would think that since Pelé was more of a support player than an out-and-out striker, a great facilitator and an exceptionally unselfish player, and since, especially with the national team, he was usually surrounded by other exceptionally talented players too, that his number of assists might be huge,... possibly similar to or greater than his number of goals. That is certainly the case with the '70 World Cup, where review of the match footage gives a reliable tally of 6 assists (a record for a single tournament which stood until this year, when it was narrowly - and somewhat contentiously - bettered by Michael Olise, who had the benefit of playing 2 additional games, including the laughably uncompetitive Third-Place Play-Off) alongside his 4 goals; that, however, may have been somewhat unrepresentative of his career as a whole, because he was playing the football of his life, and he was playing it alongside Jairzinho, Tostao, Rivelino and Gerson. Overall, he's usually credited with around 370 assists in his career, which is very much a guestimate - but again, I would suggest, probably on the low side. (Again, this is comfortably more than Cristiano, and only bettered by Messi over the last few years, when he's mostly been playing 'exhibition' football in the States.)
One of the things I find most charming and impressive about the eminence he achieved is that it was based essentially on the acclaim of his peers. He played his entire club career (at least until his 'post-retirement' phase in America) in his native Brazil - at a time when there wasn't much television coverage of games. Also, there was no truly global media such as we have now, and no Internet or 'social media' networks. Pelé became internationally famous, became universally acknowledged as the greatest player in the world not because he was being seen on millions of TV screens every week, not because he had amassed a rabid following of fans on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, but by literal word-of-mouth: simply because every coach or player in the game who had been privileged to see him play, or just knew another professional that had seen him play, realised that he was something extraordinary - and told everyone they knew about him.
Although his club career was legendary in Brazil, it was of course in the World Cup that he truly made his mark on the wider global audience. He broke into his senior national side - into the Brazilian senior national side! - as a teenager, and appeared in a World Cup for them at the age of just 17; and he didn't just warm the bench or get only token minutes (as later greats like Ronaldo [the Brazilian one] and Messi did at their first World Cups; Maradona was almost exactly the same age as Pelé had been in Sweden, and already a sensation, when Argentina hosted the Cup in 1978, but his coach Cesar Menotti felt he was still too immature for such a big stage and left him out of the squad); on the contrary, he immediately became a key player for them, scoring 2 goals in the Final to secure an unexpected win against the strong hosts, Sweden. In the South American Championship the following year, he was the top scorer and the 'Player of the Tournament' when still 18 years old. He, of course, went on to appear in 4 consecutive World Cups. Nowadays, with career longevity greatly extended by advances in sports medicine, a few players have managed 5 or 6, and Messi has now played in more Finals; but no-one else has claimed 3 Winners' medals, or been the outstanding player in two winning World Cup Finals. He is one of a very select group to have won 2 Winners' medals (at the time, there were only a handful; though the total has now risen to 20, the ranks expanded by that other great Brazilian generation who might have won 3 or 4 back-to-back Cups in the '90s and '00s, but won only the two in '94 and '02): 3 wins is off-the-charts, and is unlikely ever to be replicated (although he had suffered a muscle injury in the second game of the Chile tournament in '62 and was able to play no further part; and in fact he did not originally receive a medal, as he did not play in the Final; he was only retroactively granted one 16 years later when FIFA changed the rules to award medals to all members of the winning squad).
But the 1970 World Cup - his comeback, his farewell - was where he went from being merely the greatest player of his day to an all-time legend. In the '60s, the game was much more physical, referees were far more tolerant of foul play, tackles-from-behind were considered perfectly legal - and there was not yet any 'sports medicine' to speak of, to help players get over serious injuries. Pelé probably got kicked more than any other player in history, before or since; he got bullied out of the 1966 tournament in England, suffering a series of brutal fouls from Bulgarian and Portuguese players which left him hobbling and nearly useless for much of the game that saw Brazil eliminated. He was so disillusioned by that experience that he announced his retirement from international football shortly afterwards, when still in his mid-20s.
But he was persuaded to come back to the national team to help them qualify for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Approaching his 30th birthday (the typical retirement age at that time, especially for attacking players) and slowed by the effects of so many injuries inflicted on him over an already long career, it was obvious that this was going to be his swansong performance. And oh my god, was he determined to make it count; there was a swagger, an impetuosity about his play that had never been seen before on a world stage; and a steely determination too, a resolve that he was going to make this his tournament - that even if, somehow, Brazil didn't win it, he was going to make damn sure anyway that he was the only thing anyone remembered about that World Cup.
Words are inadequate to describe it, really. We've seen some other extraordinary displays of individual talent in later World Cups: from Cruyff in '74, from Platini in '82 and '86, from Maradona in '86 and '90, and from Messi in recent tournaments; but none of them have come anywhere near the impact Pelé had in 1970. He was utterly captivating, magical: every time he got on the ball, he made you think that something amazing might be about to happen - and very often it did.
It is the supreme mark of his greatness, I think, that he has become most celebrated for goals he didn't score: the outrageous dummy around the Uruguayan keeper on the edge of the box, but then dragging the resulting shot inches wide of the far post from a tight angle; the majestic leap and powerful downward header that appeared to have snatched a win in the tight group game against England - until Gordon Banks somehow clawed it away from the foot of his post when it already seemed to have got past him, in what soon became known as the 'Save of the Century'; and that impish attempt to lob the Czech keeper from a few yards inside his own half (perfect length on the effort, but it drifted just wide of the post). There was at least one more I recall, not as celebrated as these three, though it really ought to be; I'm not sure which game it was in - also the Czech one, I think - but Pelé had a shot which rebounded sideways off the inside of a post; he didn't give up on the ball, but tracked it right across the mouth of the goal, catching up to it before anybody else towards the far side of the six-yard-box.... and then instantly back-heeled it towards the middle of the goal again for a teammate to tap home. He scored a lot of goals in that tournament too; but it was the near-misses that encapsulated his genius. [Yes, the greatest moments in football history are completely invisible to statistics!]
One of the defining moments of David Beckham's young career was pulling off a successful lob of the Wimbledon goalkeeper, Neil Sullivan, from around the half-way line, on the opening day of the 1996 season. He probably wouldn't have thought to attempt it if he hadn't grown up hearing about how Pelé had tried it in the 1970 World Cup. Pelé, of course, wasn't the first or only player to do something like this; but he was the first to become famous for doing it, the first to do it in a big game - that was watched on television around the world. That is legacy; and that is not at all an isolated example. Almost every great player of the modern era has referenced Pelé at some point, cited him as an example and an inspiration for some aspect of their own play.
That is a measure of his lasting influence on the game. And it wasn't just the lob from 50 yards out; he had all the tricks, he 'invented' almost everything. Well, he didn't, of course; I've seen interviews where he humbly acknowledged having copied a lot of ideas from other players, and even from kids that he used to play with in the street. But all the trademark moves we so love today, things that were later popularized by other players and sometimes came to bear their names - the Cruyff turn, the Rabona kick, the Zidane spin-turn, rainbow-flicks, bicycle-kicks, stepovers, headers from the edge of the box - he did all of that, back in the 1960s.
More than the particular moves, he popularised a style of play, an attitude to the game - a joyous celebration of individual flair, imagination, improvisation. He promulgated the concept of il jogo bonito, The Beautiful Game - football as something more than just a contest, a sphere of creativity that could move people to tears with its occasional loveliness. He elevated the game from a sport into an art, into one of the highest forms of creative expression. Whenever I see a player now perform a fantastic piece of skill, I think that he is embodying the spirit of how Pelé wanted the game to be played.
I think it can fairly be said that Pelé made the World Cup as well. That tournament in 1970 was the first that was widely televised, the first where almost every game could be watched live - and many of them were, all around the world. The colossal media juggernaut that the tournament has become in modern times would probably have developed eventually, but Pelé's phenomenal performances in that first truly global edition of it gave the process a huge kick-start. He made the world fall in love with football that summer.
There might also be a case that he made the game in the USA too. He had a spectacular 'post-retirement' career with the all-star New York Cosmos for three seasons in the mid-1970s. And although that professional football initiative, the North American Soccer League, foundered in the 1980s, that brief shining moment in the '70s infected a lot of Americans with a love for the game, and triggered the beginning of a sharp rise in the game being offered as a sports option in middle schools and high schools over the next couple of decades. America is now becoming a modest power in world football again - and perhaps it might not have happened without Pelé playing for the Cosmos all those years ago.
I remember one particular moment from Pelé's time in America (occasional highlights of his games were shown on Grandstand, the BBC's Saturday afternoon sports programme). He picked the ball up 30 or 40 yards out from goal, and started cantering forward. Now, fair enough, the standard of most of the opposition in that league was not very high, and the young American players, in particular, were all simply awestruck by him and hardly dared to attempt a challenge; but he would have been hard to challenge fairly anyway, because he was driving forward with such strength and balance, the ball effortlessly glued to his toe. When two defenders did finally try to close him down, he gave a neat lay-off to Franz Beckenbauer alongside him (Beckenbauer!! this truly was 'Fantasy Football' made flesh!!); and when he received the German's instant return pass on the edge of the box, he saw that the keeper had rushed off his line to try to narrow the angle, so he played the ball first-time - a casual, insolent, inch-perfect chipped lob with the outside of his instep. It might have been a nothing game and a weak opponent, but it was one of the most perfect, one of the most beautiful goals I ever saw.
Pelé always presented as kind, humble, down-to-earth and amiable off the pitch as well. He was a superb ambassador the sport for some decades after his final retirement as a player. But, for me, it was his personality on the pitch which cemented his legacy. Even when he was getting lumps kicked out of him, and was getting no help from the referee, you rarely saw any trace of anger from him, and never any sign of retaliation (he was only booked - a 'yellow card' offence, before they'd introduced the cards - once in his entire career; never sent off, never even close). On the pitch he always seemed to project a sunny disposition, that broad grin on his face conveying a simple childlike delight in being able to play the game he loved and in being able to entertain people by doing so.
I quipped to someone on one of the Facebook forums the other day: What do you get if you combine the supreme athleticism and the lethal finishing of Cristiano with the inventiveness and the vision and the versatility of Messi? You get a player almost as good as Pelé! And he was a nicer guy, too....
[And I really don't think we'll ever see another player with that degree of natural talent again. Or at least, not with that degree of natural talent that will be allowed to flourish and express itself in such an unfettered, exuberant manner. It's just not the way of the modern game.
In theory, there should be a larger player pool now, as professional leagues have become more strongly established in almost every country in the world. Scouting and coaching programmes to nurture young talent have become far more widespread too. But I fear that might in fact be one of the limiting factors. While it should be a good thing that young players are being recognised and encouraged from an early age, allowed to devote themselves to football almost full-time, given opportunities to play with the other most talented youngsters in their country week in and week out, and to learn about the game from experienced professionals.... well, all of that, these days, unfortunately, tends to put a focus on hard work and physical strength and tactical discipline - not on instinctive, free-spirited improvisation.
It has often been suggested that one of the reasons for Brazil's relative decline over the past couple of decades has been that all of its finest players now go to play in Europe at a fairly young age - where they tend to get jogo bonito knocked out of them!
Pelé was almost completely uncoached, at least until his middle teens; he learned how to play football on the streets. And he kept that spirit with him always, even when he played in massive games on the world's greatest stage. That is why the world loved him. And why there'll never be another quite like him.]
