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Pele

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Papa Shango said:
As I don't watch La Liga or the Champions League I can only come to the conclusion that Messi is crap. I have never seen him have a great game.
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I didn't say you have to have watched someone to know whether they were good or not, its quite obvious pele was good.. but to say with absolute confidence he is the greatest of all time when you've only seen him play at most a handful of times is an eyebrow raiser for me. It's not like everything points to him obviously being the greatest ever.
 
longers said:
I didn't say you have to have watched someone to know whether they were good or not, its quite obvious pele was good.. but to say with absolute confidence he is the greatest of all time when you've only seen him play at most a handful of times is an eyebrow raiser for me. It's not like everything points to him obviously being the greatest ever.
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He's an icon. It's like Ali being the best boxer of all time. He probably wasn't but he was so iconic that he gets called the greatest.

It's all nonsense anyway. Neville Southall was the greatest ever. Nobody likes goalies though.
 
longers said:
Best of their generation sure, but claiming with lots of confidence that they are the best ever (up against all the greats of the game) when you've only really seen them play a handful of games isn't really the same as trying to claim Jo was better than Dixie !
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My Jo claim is obviously a joke, perhaps if we said Lukaku that might be a decision that a younger person could go for. Clearly it would be Dixie for us but that person who never saw A/B/C can say Lukaku or whoever as that would be the greatest to them.

In a roundabout way I'm saying generation or all time your view of who the best is is your view. I don't think anyone should pick holes in it. ...unless it is Jo or Stuart Barlow that is.
 

longers said:
My post reads back overly harsh tbh.

Im sure he was the best of his generation, all his peers seem confident of it and you can't argue with that, same goes for 3 world cups. It's just the conviction with which some claim him the best whilst not really having witnessed him play much that throws me a bit.

It's a shame there isn't lots of high-quality footage of football pre-90s, all the clips of Pele most likely don't do him justice although I guess the lack of footage also increases the mystique a little. It's the complete opposite to say Messi who has their entire career archived in video format readily available to the masses via the internet
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2 things will stick with me…..his header in the 1970 final, but especially that mind blowing dummy on the goalkeeper, forget who it was against (he then shot wide!). Ahead of his time.
 
The binman chronicles said:
You don't have to see someone to know they are the best - for you personally anyhow, it is all subjective and there isn't one concrete winner.

A cursory look at his stats and the treatment he used to get gives you a fair idea of who he was as a player.

It's like being asked who is the greatest Everton forward of all time and picking Jo because you never saw Dixie.
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I was tempted to post something like this earlier but thanks, you have done it for me.
 
There isn't much footage of Pele. It's hard to say whether he was the greatest or anyone else really. Personally, I liked Eusebio better as a player but it's a pointless exercise.
They both conducted themselves well and that was the thing.
 

Brendan Janus said:
Pele always said Bestie was the greatest, & I wouldn't disagree !!
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Always? Nah, "hardly ever" or "never" would be more accurate. George Best seems to be the only source that claimed Pele actually said it, taking a quote totally out of context and then British/Irish media running with it for years and years. He may have said Best was the "current" best player some time in the early 70s or something similar to the British or Irish press (being the diplomatic media good guy he's always been) but he doesn't think Best is the greatest player of all time.
 
longers said:
Hope he gets better but always find it mad how people can claim he is the greatest when they never actually watched him play apart from a few times every four years at a world cup, most of these people probably only watched highlights as well.
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I’ve seen all six of Brazils WC games from 1970 (in fact I think I still have them all on DVD, which I copied over from VHS years ago, although Romania game may be missing) and I wasn’t born at the time, so it’s all available and each game was streamed live on BBC or ITV. So people judging a player on his performances on that level, with the eyes of the world watching, seems fair enough.

in terms of club games, yes Santos games obviously weren’t streamed live back in the 60s over here, but Pele shone in the Inter-Continental Cup (world club championship) vs European champions Benfica and AC Milan (7 goals in 3 games) to help Santos to become world champs for 1962 and 1963 and some os these games may have been shown on UK TV (extended highlights maybe) I’m not sure. Either way, questioning this because no one saw how he fared vs the likes of Sport Recife in the domestic league is all a bit “ wet Wednesday night at Stoke” and not that important.

Saying that, I agree with your stance on whether he’s the greatest, he may be, he may not, but he was the greatest of his era and is still often a byword and for excellence, even now “he thinks he’s Pele” is often said from the crowd if a player tries something he can’t achieve- so be a reference point all these years later shows the impact he had. He’s in the “greatest” debate and in a thread about him, there’s no harm in people claiming it. As mentioned earlier, it’s only a personal opinion, not any kind of official list.
 
Stevie Nicks Bootleg said:
Always? Nah, "hardly ever" or "never" would be more accurate. George Best seems to be the only source that claimed Pele actually said it, taking a quote totally out of context and then British/Irish media running with it for years and years. He may have said Best was the "current" best player some time in the early 70s or something similar to the British or Irish press (being the diplomatic media good guy he's always been) but he doesn't think Best is the greatest player of all time.
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You might be right mate, but in my opinion, Bestie was the "best"
 

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