Today I’m going to take a look at the seven main arguments used to dismiss Pele’s credentials as an all time great and hopefully give a more balanced and credible view on them.
Here are our 7 reasons why calling Pele a fraud is ridiculous
7. Poor Quality of Opposition
An argument that I hear time and time again about Pele’s supposedly embellished greatness is that he only stood out or scored prolifically because he was playing against rubbish players. The main justification for this argument in that Pele spent his best years playing in Brazil, and the only other league he played in was the NASL.
During Pele’s career, the best Brazilian players played in Brazil, not Europe, making the Brazilian league very competitive. Imagine if every player from Neymar to Thiago Silva, Paulinho, Coutinho, Firmino, Fred and Marcelo spent their entire careers in Brazil. The Brazilian league would be a strong one. Now remember that Brazil were an infinitely stronger force during Pele’s career than they are now. That meant the domestic game in Brazil was far from being poor.
In the 1962 and 1963 Intercontinental Cups, Santos beat Benfica 8-5 on aggregate over two legs and AC Milan 7-6 on aggregate over three legs. Benfica and AC Milan were considered the two finest European club sides of the 1960’s. Santos beat them both, and Pele scored 9 goals in 5 games against them. His record during Santos’ tours of Europe was similarly emphatic. Factor in his displays in the World Cup and the claim that Pele’s success was down to playing against poor players quickly begins to unravel.
6. Just in a Great Team
Pele of Brazil attends the Barclays Premier League match between Liverpool and Manchester United at Anfield on March 22, 2015 in Liverpool, England.
This is one of the arguments which I find the most amusing. People, sometimes in the same sentence, will claim that Pele was only great because he was in a great team, whilst also claiming the league he played in was dreadful. Where do they think his great teammates played their club football? The idea that Pele only did well because he was in a great team is one also occasionally made about Lionel Messi, and it’s pretty daft in both cases. The fact that Pele still stood out at club and international level when surrounded by world class players is inadvertently admitting his genius. Even among stars as gifted as Garrincha or Jairzinho, Pele was still seen as Brazil’s linchpin and most dangerous player.
5. Goal Scoring Record
The age-old discussion of Pele’s goal scoring record is one which we should now be able to put to bed. Pele’s claim that he scored over 1,000 goals is of course a bit daft, and one which I think has done more bad than good for his legacy within the game, but that’s not to say he didn’t score a phenomenal number of goals. In officially recognised games for Santos, New York Cosmos and Brazil, Pele scored a total of 784 goals in 855 games. Now, a great many of those goals did come in Sao Paulo’s regional Campeonato Paulista, which it would be fair to assume was of a lower standard than the national league, but in every league, every level, regional, domestic or international, Pele’s goal scoring record was always superb. The fact that he scored prolifically in less competitive leagues is hardly an argument against him when he was also prolific against the best teams on the planet.
4. Football Is Better Now
Brazilian football legend Pele poses after receiving from 46-year-old industrial engineer Jarbas Menighini (out of frame), his handmade replica of the FIFA World Cup trophy, in the…
This is a pretty boring old argument that you hear in regard to a hatful of stars of yesteryear, but particularly Pele, so it’s one we must address. It is obviously true that football, like virtually every sport, has come on leaps and bounds since the 1960’s. Diet, discipline and training regimes have all improved, and the game is much faster now. However, it is a level playing field. So a player in the 1930’s was playing against players with the same level of dietary and coaching expertise as his opponents, just as a player in 2018 would be. To write off Pele because he played his football half a century ago, would also mean writing off the likes of Maradona, Gascoigne and even your favourite players of the late 90’s and early 2000’s, since football has come a long way in even that short period of time. Put simply, you can only judge a player in their own era, and to dismiss a player from the pre-war era because they didn’t yet know that smoking was bad for them would be patently unfair.
3. Never Played in Europe
There are two points to this one really. Either people are suggesting that Pele didn’t play in Europe because he wasn’t good enough, which is barmy to the point of diagnosable insanity, or it goes back to the first point and they think domestic football in Brazil was rubbish so the fact Pele never played in Europe means he can’t be considered an all time great. Since we’ve already addressed the latter, we’ll just discuss the first of those two here.
When Brazil won the World Cup three times in 1958, 1962 and 1970, every single one of their players played domestically. The likes of Djalma Santos, Nilton Santos, Garrincha and Pele could have walked into any team in the world, they didn’t because that wasn’t the norm, not because they weren’t capable. Okay, I think that covers that one to be honest.
2. Injured in 1962 and Brazil Still Won
Pele signs copies of his book ‘Why Soccer Matters’ at Barnes & Noble, 5th Avenue on April 1, 2014 in New York City.
I have seen it argued that Pele wasn’t that important to Brazil because he got injured and they still won the 1962 World Cup, which is true. The 1962 World Cup was the tournament which aligned best with Pele’s prime as a footballer. It was, therefore, a travesty that he got injured in only Brazil’s second match, and a mark of his greatness that he is still considered one of the tournaments greatest ever players despite barely featuring in ‘62. In Brazil’s first game, Pele assisted the first goal and beat four players before slotting past the Mexican goalkeeper for his country’s second. In the next game against Czechoslovakia, his tournament came to an end.
Brazil, inspired by the magnificent form of Garrincha, still went on to claim the title. Kudos to them. This argument would hold weight if anyone was arguing that Brazil weren’t a good team and were only made great by Pele. I have never seen that argued and I would never make that claim myself. The fact that they won a tournament without him is a mark of their class, but not a slight against Pele in any respect.
1. Never Top Scorer at a World Cup
Pele never won a World Cup Golden Boot, in case you didn’t know. In 1958, aged 17, he was the second top scorer to Just Fontaine. In 1962, he got injured in Brazil’s second match having scored once. In 1966, he scored once before being brutalised and injured again. And in 1970, he scored four goals, but Gerd Muller took the Golden Boot with 10.
All in all, Pele scored 12 goals in 14 games at the World Cup, which isn’t bad for a player who missed most of the two tournaments which fell during his peak years. Had he been fit throughout ‘62 and ‘66, it’s likely he would have been the tournaments all time top scorer, and Brazil may have won four World Cups rather than three during that period.
As for the argument that this stops Pele from being an all time great, I’d ask, who do you consider to be the greatest footballer of all time? Diego Maradona was never the top scorer at a World Cup, Lionel Messi has never been the top scorer at a World Cup, Johan Cruyff was never the top scorer at a World Cup, Cristiano Ronaldo has never been the top scorer at a World Cup and Alfredo di Stefano never even played in a World Cup. So if never picking up the Golden Boot means you have to rule Pele out, you’d best rule those five out too.
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