WITH Gareth Bale, the world’s most expensive player, arriving at Real Madrid stating that Ronaldo is the king of the club and he wants to learn from him, the argument about who is the world’s best-ever player carries on and on.
Many of the younger fans will have Ronaldo and Messi near the top of the list, but older supporters will say that the battle is between Pele and Maradona.
Now, as a middle aged man, I have seen Maradona score that wonder goal against England in 1986, and single-handedly win the World Cup for Argentina that year when they had an average team which included the likes of Brown, Cuciuffo, and Borghi (remember them? Well neither do I!). Maradona also turned Napoli into one of the top sides in Europe in the late 80s, so I can understand the hype that puts him near the top of the list. But Pele? That is a different matter.
I’ve heard the stories that he won the 1958 World Cup at 17 and that he scored more than 1,000 goals in his career – but I have not actually seen any of these goals on TV. Everytime a clip of Pele is shown on TV it’s of him missing.
There’s the save by England’s Gordon Banks in Mexico 1970 when it looked easier to score (which Brazil then went on to win 1-0 from a goal by Jairzinho), and Pele shooting from the halfway line against Peru in the quarter-finals and missing by yards. The keeper didn’t even have to make a save.
The other favourite clip that the TV companies like to show is him taking the ball around the Uruguayan keeper Ladislao Mazurkiewicz and then falling over and missing an open goal by putting the ball wide.
All these clips are from the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico. Maybe that is the only World Cup that the British TV companies have the rights to show, but Pele actually scored four goals in that tournament, including the opening goal in the final against Italy.
I would have thought at least one of them must have been captured on camera. And, yes, I appreciate cameras weren’t in every part of the ground as we are used to these days, but I would have expected the cameramen to have captured at least one of his goals, or were they too busy scanning the crowds for scantily-clad Brazilian beauties? That Brazilian side was arguably the greatest team ever, so surely the beauty was on the pitch and not in the crowd.
We know that the cameraman was doing his job at least twice in the final as we are treated to Carlos Alberto’s strike in the dying stages of the game and Jairzinho’s mazy run and shot across the goalkeeper on a regular basis. So if Pele’s first goal of the final was filmed why is there a reluctance to show it? Was it an ugly goal? Did it hit him and go in? Or a massive deflection? Or an error by the goalkeeper?
We see clips all the time from other World Cups and other great players scoring. Surely there must be some of Pele? He did score 77 in 92 appearances for Brazil and a total of 650 in his professional career.
So come on TV companies, show Pele actually hitting the back of the net, so I can make up my own conclusions, and not deal in hearsay. Because at the moment, and I’m loath to say it, the world’s best footballer is a short, fat, cheating, drug-taking Argentinian.
