I can never understand how people always rate Pele as THE best player to grace the game of football. The man never proved himself outside of Brazil (I don't really count his joke of a stint in the US)
If he played a few years in Europe and managed to dominate there than I'd have no problems in saying that he was the best.
Fair enough, Pele DID have a great international career, BUT he was surrounded by other great players as well.
Maradona on the other hand managed to single-handedly take an average Argentina team in 86 to World Cup glory, AND managed to dominate in BOTH South America and (apart from his unsuccessful stint at Barcelona where he got the shit kicked out of him) Europe
The 3 best players EVER are:
Maradona
Pele
Cruyff
Pele dominated International football the level that comes above club football, thats how.
Its pretty easy to see why people rate him highly.
There's some points that need to be made regarding the examples some people are using. For a start it was a different era, there was more games televised during Maradonnas time than in Peles day, as there were more games probably. Just like today there are more games, players have more international caps, European cup appearances...more opportunities to score more goals.
It's difficult to seperate the two, and maybe we shouldn't try, rather just appreciate that they were probably without question the two most talented attacking footballers of all time
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Pele dominated International football the level that comes above club football, thats how.
Its pretty easy to see why people rate him highly.
It's difficult to seperate the two, and maybe we shouldn't try, rather just appreciate that they were probably without question the two most talented attacking footballers of all time