Lionel Messi’s four FIFA Ballon d’Or titles speak for themselves, while Cristiano Ronaldo’s victory with Portugal at the 2016 European Championship keeps the Real Madrid star on par with his Argentine rival.
Add in Alfredo Di Stéfano, who helped Real Madrid to five consecutive European Cup victories between 1956 and 1960 and Diego Maradona, best known for his ‘Goal of the Century’ and ‘Hand of God’ goals, both scored against England in the same match.
Top it off with the often excluded Josef Bican, who was named as the greatest goalscorer of the 20th century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics, and you have a good selection of the greatest football players of all time.
However, one player stands out among the very best as the ‘cherry on top’ – Brazilian icon Pelé, who scored more than 750 competitive goals throughout his unbelievable career, since earning him the FIFA Ballon d’Or Prix d’Honneur award, presented to players who were unable to win the Ballon d’Or award during their time in football due to the fact it was initially reserved for Europe-based players.
Despite some claims that Pelé cannot be recognised as the greatest player of all time, due to the fact that he never played in one of the world’s best leagues, instead opting to play out the majority of his career with Brazilian side Santos before finishing up with the New York Cosmos, his feats on the international stage prove otherwise.
Pelé, known in Brazil as O Rei do Futebol, or ‘The King of Football’, remains the only player in history to win three World Cup titles – the fact that a player of Lionel Messi’s calibre had struggled to clinch one shows just how monumental the Brazilian’s achievements are.
Growing up
“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” – Pelé
Given his divine abilities on the football pitch, it’s funny that the Brazilian, born Edson (after famed American inventor Thomas Edison), would come to be known as Pelé – a nickname given to him by his school friends due to his mispronunciation of ‘Bilé’, the name of his favourite player, a former Vasco da Gama goalkeeper. Fittingly, Bilé is the Hebrew word for ‘miracle’.
Born in Minas Gerais, the second most populated state in Brazil behind only Sao Paulo, Pelé was introduced to the sport at a young age by his father, Dondinho, himself a professional footballer throughout the 1940s and 50s.
Large parts of Dondinho’s career remain unrecorded, but it is said that he managed close to 900 goals throughout a career of less than 800 matches and amassed an astonishing tally of 19 goals in six matches for the Brazilian national team.
Unfortunately, injury forced the promising striker to retire early and take up a job as a hospital cleaner, settling down to a life of poverty. On the plus side,this freed up a lot of time for Dondinho to focus on moulding his son into the future star that he would become.
A lack of money meant that they were unable to afford a proper football, meaning Pelé was forced to learn the sport using a sock filled with newspaper – although, it often transpires that footballers who learn football in a similar fashion go on to become the very best, due to the brilliant ball control and fine touches that they develop from playing with such an unpredictable, make-shift ball.
Despite working throughout his childhood to earn some extra income for his family, Pelé turned out for a number of local amateur clubs, including Bauru Athletic Club’s youth side, who he guided to three consecutive Sao Paulo state youth championships during the 1950s.
At the time, former Brazilian striker Waldemar de Brito was working at the club as a scout, and following the club’s third victory, he felt that it was time for Pelé to move on to bigger and better things.
Feeling that he was ready to take his place in one of Brazil’s biggest sides, de Brito approached Santos FC, insisting that the 15-year-old would go on to become one of the greatest footballers of all time.
After a brief trial, Pelé was snapped up by the club in June 1956, making his professional debut and scoring his first ever goal just two months later, before netting three more times in the same match. His talent was clearly visible, but few would have expected those goals, during a 7-1 victory over Corinthians, to be the first of more than a thousand more that he would go on to net for Santos.
Santos: Become the best
“I sometimes lie awake at night and wonder why I am still so popular and, to be honest, I don’t know.” – Pelé
By the time the 1957 season kicked off, Pelé was already a first-team regular at Santos and would immediately become a vital part of the squad, topping the club’s goalscoring charts with 43 goals in 40 competitive matches and helping them to a second place finish in the Campeonato Paulista.
Soon after, he earned his first call-up to the Brazilian national team, just 10 months after breaking into the professional game and celebrated the occasion with a goal on his debut. He would then go on to smash his tally in the 1958 season, scoring an unbelievable 75 goals in 53 matches, earning Santos the Campeonato Paulista title.
Despite picking up a knee injury ahead of that summer’s World Cup tournament, Pelé was included in Brazil’s squad to travel to Sweden. Ready for selection ahead of their third group game, a 2-0 win over the Soviet Union which confirmed their place in the knockout stages, the 17-year-old was handed a place in the starting line-up.
His first competitive international goal would come in the next round, where his single strike would dump Wales out of the competition and see him named the youngest goalscorer in World Cup history. That feat was bettered in the next round, when he netted a second-half hat-trick against France, earning Brazil a place in the final.
Two more goals in the final, a 5-2 victory over Sweden, saw Pelé claim the first international trophy of his career, with both the press and fans naming him as the tournament’s surprise package. The excitement and toll of playing in such a huge game caused Pelé to faint following the final whistle, before bursting into tears shortly after recovering, serving as a reminder of just how young the talented goalscorer was.
He would continue to impress over the next few seasons, scoring another 225 competitive goals throughout the next four campaigns, in three of which Santos emerged as Campeonato Paulista champions, while they also claimed the Torneio Rio – Sao Paulo trophy in 1959. The fact that these unbelievable goal hauls were scored outside of a top league is often used to play down Pelé’s achievements, but it was enough to convince the likes of European heavyweights Real Madrid, Juventus and Manchester United to submit offers for the player, who had already cemented the ‘world’s best’ title, in 1962.
Pelé confirmed in 2016 that he had been moments away from joining a Manchester United side featuring George Best, only to decide against the move at the last minute. Part of the issue was that Pelé had been made a national treasure by the Brazilian government, which would have complicated any potential move abroad.
Instead, Pelé opted to stay at Santos, with the club seeking out sizeable appearance fees to play in exhibition matches against foreign teams in order to pay the talented striker the wages that he undeniably deserved.
Despite suffering an injury that ruled him out of the 1962 World Cup after just two matches, the following season would be one of Pelé’s best, as Santos claim the Copa Libertadores, South America’s answer to the Champions League, in a campaign that would go down as Santos’ greatest ever. They also retained the Brazilian league title, as well as the Taca Brasil, the country’s major cup competition.
Likewise, they emerged victorious in the Intercontinental Cup, a two-legged tie played between the champions of South America and the champions of Europe. The event saw Santos matched up with European Cup winners Benfica, in which they claimed a 3-2 victory at home, followed by a 5-2 victory in Portugal.
Santos continued to pick up trophies throughout the next few years, winning the Copa Libertadores, Intercontinental Cup, Campeonato Brasileiro and Torneio Rio – Sao Paulo again in 1963, before retaining the Torneio Rio – Sao Paulo again in 1964 and reclaiming the Campeonato Paulista title that they had surrendered the season before.
However, things had began to decline at Santos, and 1963 would be their final Copa Libertadores victory until Barcelona superstar Neymar helped them to reclaim it again in 2011, almost 50 years later. While Santos’ dominance was broken, they continued to win trophies and pick up titles here and there, while Pelé continued to net consistently, season after season, rapidly approaching the 1000 goal mark.
O Milésimo (‘The Thousandth’) would eventually come in 1969 in a game against Vasco da Gama at the famed Maracana Stadium.
“For the first time in my career, I felt really nervous,” Pele recalled. “I’d never felt such pressure. I was shaking, but it was down to me and… Gooooal! What a feeling. The stadium exploded.”
The monumental moment, scored from the penalty spot, saw hundreds of football fans and reporters flood onto the field to celebrate and capture Pelé’s celebrations. Even Vasco supporters shared the moment, presenting the iconic player with a club shirt with the number 1000 printed on the back. Given the magnitude of the event, the game was halted for almost 30 minutes while the nation celebrated the greatest footballer of all time.
Pelé would stay at Santos for another five seasons after that, taking his club tally to a total of 1217 goals in 1257 matches, 730 of which had come in 767 competitive matches.
Despite insisting that he would never play in the World Cup again after George McCabe’s horror tackle in 1966, Pelé helped Brazil to clinch their third World Cup title in four attempts in 1970, scoring four goals throughout.
However, the turn of the decade marked a noticeable decline in the Brazilian’s goalscoring prowess. By then reaching 30, Pelé managed just 19 goals in 44 appearances in 1970, followed by 8 in 42 in 1971. Another 54 goals in 111 games during his last three seasons at Santos was an impressive feat, but it was clear that his career was beginning to come to an end.
New York Cosmos: Winding down
“At that time, I had a lot of proposals to play in Europe, England, Italy, Spain, Mexico. But I said no, after 18 years I want to rest.” – Pelé
By the time Pelé moved to the United States for a world record wage of $2.8 million for three seasons, he was past his prime and undoubtedly entering the final stages of his career. However, the impact that he had on the North American Soccer League (NASL) was huge. In just two years, NASL’s average attendance grew by almost 80%, while his new club, New York Cosmos, saw attendance figures triple during his first season.
While he wasn’t quite the Pelé of old during his time in America, scoring 37 competitive goals throughout his three seasons with the Cosmos, his impact was huge. The club quickly became the biggest in the league and saw their average attendance figure climb from 3,578 in the 1974 season to 34,142 throughout 1977.
That campaign would prove to be his last, with the Brazilian legend calling time on his career at the end of the season. His final game would be an exhibition match between the two clubs that he had represented throughout his career, Santos vs New York Cosmos, in front of a capacity crowd at the 80,000-seater Giants Stadium.
Choosing to represent both teams, switching sides at half-time, Pelé provided an assist to give Santos the lead, before netting a long-ranged free kick to hand Cosmos a 2-1 victory – the 1281st, and final, goal scored by the man deservedly named football’s greatest of all time.