Pele, then Messi and Maradona

Everyone has their own opinion about who is the greatest football player of all time (GOAT) and in our choices we show our biases, whether in favor or against a certain technical trait (dribbling, scoring, passing, if you love offense) or perhaps other skills if you are defensive-minded (breaking up the opposition’s attack, clearances or saves).

Some prefer their choice to have gone on and contributed outside the pitch, such as Johan Cruyff and total-tiki-taka. Others like to look at pure statistics—goals, assists, saves, collective and individual trophies, or impact on a team during a season. Finally, others still like to look at mesmerizing moments of pure genius like Pele’s 1958 and 1970 World Cups, or Maradona’s 1986 World Cup, or Messi’s 91-goal 2012 season.

But when the dust settles most fans of our sport coalesce around the exploits of three offensive players: the 21-year careers of Pele (1956-1977, who has been retired for 43 years) and Maradona (1976-1997 who has been retired for 23 years), and the 16-year-and-counting (2004-2020) career of Lionel Messi. As the objective of the offensive side of a team is to score, we must look at both individual scoring and individual player honors, and then to the impact those contributions have upon team honors.

Let us say, for argument’s sake, that Messi plays another five years to make our trio fully comparable in terms of years played. Then, let’s grant Messi a Cristiano Ronaldo-like longevity and productivity over those five years and add for him his cumulative averages of 157 appearances and 130 goals. We would be left with the following level of individual offensive production.

Some may argue that one or the other player provided more assists or had more impact on the pitch at a given time, but most would agree that all three were singularly capable of determining the outcome of a match on their own. These stats put Pele on top at nearly a goal a game over 21 years.

Next, we could look at collective trophies won and find that Pele won six national titles, ten state championships, two each Copa Libertadores (Champions League equivalent), and Intercontinental Cups (FIFA Club World Cup equivalent), and three World Cups. In all, he won sixteen domestic and seven international competitions. Maradona won eight domestic titles and two international ones. Messi (assuming he wins another four domestic titles and two international ones) would have won twenty-eight domestic and twelve international ones. Setting aside the level of play for each, the teammates our three men have been surrounded by at club and national levels, and the overall value or significance of say, a CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores viz a UEFA Champions League viz a World Cup, we could argue that Messi has won more collective hardware.

If we then look at individual honors and again opt out of arguing that the last couple of decades seem to have added a trophy for everything under the sun, and we similarly opt-out of comparing a contemporary Ballon d’Or to a fifty-years-ago FIFA World Cup Golden Ball, or a 19 La Liga Pichichi to a Coppa Italia top scorer, we can simply count the number of such hardware each player took home. In this category, we find Pele has won 98 such honors, Maradona has 55, and Messi has sixty-nine and we will add twenty-two more over his last five years for a total of 91 honors. Pele has won more individual hardware.

For me, my bias is two-fold: sustained greatness over time and peak greatness at points in time. So, let us look at the level of performance of each of our three men over their careers and then, let’s choose their greatest moments (plays, goals, matches, seasons, tournaments) and see how many of those we can sprinkle upon those extended years of a career.

Among Pele’s peak accomplishments are being: the unquestioned best player in the world for the entirety of his career; the only 2-time World Cup champion on our list (I will subtract 1962 as he played little in Chile); the all-time South American international team scorer; Santos all-time leading scorer; football’s all-time hat-tricks leader; the youngest winner of the World Cup; having the most assists in a World Cup final and in World Cup history; the all-time record top scorer in a calendar year; averaging 51.33 goals a year for nine consecutive years; owning his rookie and swansong World Cups 12-years apart with performances that were only matched once, by Maradona in 1986; his ridiculous Maracana score, a flick-over-everyone and head-in goal; and these accomplishments took place at a time when fouling someone out of a match or tourney was unsanctioned fair play.

Maradona, who endured much of the same treatment as Pele did, albeit in an era where there were safeguards to apply if the refs but had the nerve to so do (Diego was fouled a record called 50 times during the Italian 1990 World Cup), nearly won the 1986 World Cup on his own; willed a nowheresville Napoli to national glory, also nearly single-handedly; scored what many consider the goal of the century; had nearly as many spectacular goals as Pele and Messi; and was the only player ever spoken of in the same breath with Pele for a quarter-century.

Messi, who is now also spoken of in the same breath as both Pele and Maradona, has: won six Ballon d’Ors (four consecutively); the European Golden Shoe and the Spanish Pichichi six times; held his club’s and league’s all-time leading scorer; scored a goal that seemed eerily like Diego’s, only in Spain; scored nearly as many spectacular goals—dribbling, free kicks, technical wizardry—as Pele; rated second to Pele in goals in a single calendar year; routinely tops the assist table in Spanish domestic play, and averaged 56.5 goals a year for 11 consecutive years.

My clincher here, aside from the listed accomplishments which would edge Pele in the lead, is the fact that few players, and on this list only one, has both a ridiculously sustained repertoire of peaks and such outstanding fails or near misses that even they constitute a separate category of superlatives.

Consider Pele’s 1970 World Cup dummy, and his direct volleyed-shot on goal off of a goal-kick, against Uruguayan goalie Ladislao Mazurkiewicz; his past-midfield shot on Czechoslovakia’s goal in the same tourney; his dribble through every Peruvian defender only to shoot off the post—this in a World Cup where his team scored 19 goals and Pele had four goals and seven assists—58% of his team’s output.

Then think back a dozen years prior, when Pele’s at his first World Cup, aged 17—a cup in which he scored six goals and had an assist 44% of his team’s output—his dribble through three defenders and then setting up Vava for what should have been the opening goal against France in the semi-finals, a match in which he scored a hat-trick; or his out of the penalty area dribble, juggle and shot off the post in the final against Sweden a match in which he had two goals.

Over that twelve-year period, and some would argue for another 2-3 years after, ages 17 to 29, from infancy through adulthood in our sport, Pele was the unquestioned top artist in soccer. With the possible exceptions of Wayne Gretzky, Jack Nicklaus, Roger Federer, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jordan, Pele was the consummate athletic artist of all time.  

Pele is my number one, and as of today, Diego and Lionel are tied for second.