It’s the guy this move is named after
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If we’re talking global soccer players who are popular in the US, Beckham might be the only one who could compete w/ Pele… And a lot of casuals know Beckham b/c of the movie or from being married to a Spice Girl not necessarily from on the field stuff.
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You guys are 10000% wrong here imo.
The big difference between 60s-90s and 2000s-current was it was quite hard to watch soccer on TV!
Like how Bob is saying Yao is way bigger than MJ in China, well its because of TV. You couldn’t just get a random bulls game on in China in 1991.
You could get every rockets game once he was in the league.
There are hundreds of bars in the USA/canada that open at 6-9 am to watch EPL games on weekends. That wasn’t a thing for Pele or Beckham.
Every game is televised. This wasn’t a thing 20 years ago, never mind 30-50.
When I went to NYC for the first time in 2018 I wore an Arsenal jersey in manhatten. I had dozens of people make a comment. My gf didn’t get it. And a blank arsenal jersey isn’t a Ronaldo Madrid or Messi Barca jersey.
El Classico when it was Ronaldo’s Madrid vs Messi’s Barca was getting 700+ million viewers worldwide. Google seems to say the super bowl is about 150 million.
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Winning the WC is effing hard. 3 is amazing. Pele being the Gretzky in terms of ability is appropriate other than it’s the most popular game on the planet.
I’d guess all time worldwide it’s
Pele
Ali
The some combo of other top tier soccer players plus Michael and Tiger.
And the talent of Pele couldn’t touch Maradonna, but FIFA marketed Pele more because he wasn’t a cokehead running with the Italian mafia.
This is some top notch GOATness
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Pele is vastly underestimated in Europe as very few of his games were televised and he stayed in Brazil. Maradona was definitely not more talented than Pele.
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+1
Maradona > Pele should be a scorching hot take, but it’s actually somehow mainstream. I don’t get it. It’s not even close. OK, maybe it’s close, but it’s still clear who is better.
Pele vs Maradona might be close and it is hard to tell because most of the amazing things Pele did were not televised and only retold and in some cases re-enacted but it is Pele > Maradona.
The opposite is the scorching take, genuinely.
You can watch documentaries on both.
Pele is the kind of skilled player from the past where their skills don’t translate to the modern game as well. It’s just too far removed, anything before 1970 doesn’t resemble a modern match at all.
Same stuff you see with Maurice Richard, Wilt, Unitas etc. They’re a product of when they played and that’s fine.
You can watch Maradonna docs and go “uh, they might be better than Messi if they just got sent to this era.”
Winning a title with that Napoli team and the Argentina roster is legitimately insane.
The Brazil teams Pele was on had 3-4 other players cited in top 50 all time lists.
The teams Maradonna were on might not qualify or be top half in the league if he got hurt.
I dont have to think twice before putting Cruyff over Pele as well. They basically invented modern football.
For people who have Pele above Messi, Cruyff, Maradonna etc do you have Wilt, Richard, Unitas as GOATS?
You are the worst football poster I have ever come across on the Internet. It’s like you are programmed to say the most wrong things in the most self confident manner ever.
I genuinely don’t know how you manage it
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Very constructive and helpful
Its quite rare to see any list with Pele in the top 2 of all time by any professional organization. Most professional writers have him barely clinging on to top 5, more out of courtesy and respect for the era.
They’re often in the 4-6 range, just ahead of Beckenbauer, Zidane, R9.
This isnt new or controversial in football circles in the slightest.
I got a ton right in the World Cup, posted my bets every day and made gigantic profit. If you followed my pre tournament future bets, or daily game bets, you would have made dozens of units in profit.
This is how I first learned of Pele rip
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Im not sure why you have wilt in there. He was actually the only superstar of the era who for sure could compete in todays game. Super athletic highly mobile 7’1 (probably taller in todays measurements) with crazy passing skills for a big man considering it wasnt something worked on at the time.
Wilt is probably underrated in this sense.
Someone like Bill Russell would probably not be anything special these days imo
These time machine type questions are some of the least interesting and most stupid in sport imo, because no players from 20+ years ago would stand a chance if transplanted into modern high level games.
This should be obvious when you look at the defences alone.
Comparing Pele to Cruyff is valid and your judgement is way off (and this from a huge Cruyff fan). You could say
My list is worldwide awareness/popularity, not necessarily greatest athlete. So era doesn’t matter as much.
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I completely agree with the first paragraph but actually think Maradonna would survive/thrive.
Obviously you’d have to cut out the drugs to have the long kind of careers Messi/Ronaldo have, but Maradonna was before my time and I’m in absolute awe any time I watch their highlights.
Is it just me or does Maradona always seem kind of overweight when he was playing. I always think, “Man he’d be a lot faster if he dropped some weight.”
I don’t think pace is a big issue as long as you have the world class intelligence imo. We saw Messi with much less pace than he used to just have the best WC performance of any player since at least R9 in 2002.