As soon as I saw this topic I remembered the posts made by tpmazembe. I could only find the ones wherein he mostly talks about two points - quality of the Sao Paulo regional league and the decline of Pele at a relatively young age, and shared them here; but I think there might be more talking about other aspects as well which I couldn't find. Ultimately, I think younger posters would do well to read better sources than wiki/transfermkt/whoscored before fully developing their opinions.
@Estel - looks quite interesting but there is no way I am going to read through all of that. Can you give a summary? Also, I notice the poster mentions three other internationals besides Diego himself at Napoli, in truth it was more like seven in total: Maradona, Careca, Alemao, Carnevale, De Napoli, Bagni, Ferrara.
I don't shy away from that conclusion at all. You'll notice that I apply that very point to Messi and CR7 in my Gerd Müller thread. It's just that not every thread is specifically about Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, so I didn't feel the need to specifically mention them here. Anyways, the difference with Pelé is a matter of degree. His teams were scoring even more than Barcelona and RM are scoring. We're talking about a prime Pelé playing on a team that scores 3.4 goals a game, as opposed to Barcelona/RM scoring about 2.8 goals a game in this era. That certainly indicates an even wider talent gap. And a wider talent gap is very plausible when we realize that international call-ups/caps make it obvious that Santos had one of the top couple players in all of Brazil in most positions, let alone top couple players in the Paulista. You say that Barcelona and RM are "stacked the best players from around the world" while Santos has only players "from one nationality," as if that refutes what I'm saying. The problem is that the rest of La Liga also has players from all around the world, while the Paulista only had people from one region of Brazil. In an absolute sense, perhaps Barca/RM are more stacked than Santos was, but we're talking about how they stack up comparatively to their opponents. The fact that Santos scored so much more certainly seems to indicate that they had an even larger comparative advantage within their league than Barcelona and RM have in theirs. Two big problems with the Suarez and Neymar analogy: 1. Suarez and Neymar are significantly better than Toninho Guerreiro. You're comparing two guys in the top 3 or 4 players in the world with a guy who only got 1 NT cap. 2. Toninho Guerreiro didn't just score more than Pelé in a given season where Pelé didn't score as much as normal. He scored as much as Pelé normally scored. Neither Suarez nor Neymar have yet scored like 50 goals in a season like Messi normally does (though perhaps Suarez might get there this season). In contrast, Toninho scored 76 goals in a year in which Pelé's surrounding seasons never reached that. The more apt comparison would be something like Pedro Rodriguez scoring like 50+ goals for Barca. A non-star scoring as much as the star player normally scored. We just wouldn't see that. That's fair, but people act like Pelé was an absolutely legendary scorer throughout his entire time at Santos. He certainly wasn't. Moreover, Santos wasn't a "shitty team" when Pelé started scoring very little. They still had 4 guys who were capped by the Brazilian NT. Within the context of the Paulista, that's still a talented team. It's just more like the equivalent of a Tottenham or Valencia, rather than the absolutely dominant juggernaut they had previously been. Messi and CR7 wouldn't score as much for those teams as they do now, but they wouldn't start scoring only like 0.3 goals a game. Perhaps his average would've gone down, perhaps not. 20 matches isn't a ton, I agree. But it's not nothing either. The point was to show that, at both club and NT level, when Pelé went down, less-heralded players were able to replicate his scoring. Vava did that. You might think it was possibly a statistical fluke, but the fact is that he did it. And so did Toninho. Surely that's significant.
Let me quote my original post: "Santos was playing in a regional league within Brazil. This meant that every player in the league was Brazilian, but the league did not contain all of the talent within Brazil. Rather, it only contained a fraction of it. Brazil was in a golden age, so this by itself doesn't necessarily show that it was a weak league, and that's not what I'm trying to prove. But consider this:" I am expressly not arguing that the Paulista was particularly weak league. It may have been, but it may not have been, for reasons that you bring up. But I'm not arguing that. What I am arguing is that, whatever the level of the Paulista, Santos was incredibly strong relative to the rest of the league. This is borne out by their ludicrously high scoring numbers. It is also borne out by looking at NT call-ups/caps, where Santos absolutely dominates the rest of the Paulista (and in a league with people of all one nationality, NT call-ups are a very good measure of who were considered the best players).
The fact is, as stated by the post Estel reposted, Pele's scoring was an anomaly before and after his time. I think that's pretty clear. He was top 10 top scorer of the Paulista league. 5 of those with extremely high scoring record. Wonder seasons do happen to many players. Plus Pele' did more than scoring although I know scoring seems to be the focus here. But I will still add this, in 2 of those years Pele' was hurt in the 60s and didn't play the whole season, Santos didn't win the Paulista title. Yes it looks like there were dips. But certainly not as good. There are many variables that can go astray. Let me also remind you the Paulista league has for a long time had 4 big teams which Santos has historically been the smallest of them. Palmeiras, Corinthians, Sao Paulo are all clubs with extensive and winning history. In the 60s Palmeiras were no slouch having many great players and were the main team to give Santos problems. Vava' is a Brazilian legend. But as an example, Luis Fabiano has a pretty goal scoring average to Romario. So sorry, I don't think it's fair compare 20 games to 90+ which Pele played which were through his youth, prime, and post-prime (while Vava' probably only through the best part of his career). Have you ever seen Pele's movie showing many highlights of his career ? I just don't see how anybody could watch that and not come out thinking he was really that great. Goals with left / right leg, header, FKs, from dribbles ... If you haven't I suggest you do.
As you would expect from the top scorer of a team that completely dominates its league scoring-wise...Notice that when Pelé went down for a year, Toninho was suddenly the Paulista top scorer. When you have a team that is scoring more than anyone else every season, then their star striker will get top scorer pretty much every time. Sure, wonder seasons do happen. But Toninho had two seasons like this. Not only that, but he still wasn't thought of highly enough to get caps even during those seasons. Also, do you think a 1-cap player could wonder-season his way into scoring like Messi or CR7 right now? If not, then why could it happen with Santos/Pelé? In 1963, they still scored the most goals in the Paulista. They just had an absolute defensive breakdown, giving up twice as many goals as the other top teams. Same thing in 1970: they still scored the most goals in the Paulista. I agree with you that it's perhaps notable that Santos wasn't good enough to win the league even without him. But there were a couple other good teams in the Paulista, who had the rest of the Paulista's representatives in the Brazilian NT, so it's not a huge surprise. Santos' huge goal tally is more about having a giant advantage over the vast majority of the teams and therefore scoring tons than it is about being WAY better than Palmeiras, who were pretty good in their own right. In any case, it is still pretty notable that Santos lead the league in scoring even without Pelé playing for most of the season. Relatedly, in 1957 (i.e. the year before Pelé started), Santos scored 144 goals in the Paulista. The next highest scoring team in the league scored 99. They somehow didn't win the league that year either, but it is quite clear that Santos had the best attack in the league even without Pelé. Given that we are talking about goalscoring, this is perhaps the most relevant thing. As I mentioned above (before reading this part of your post), I completely agree that Palmeiras was a good team. Not coincidentally, they also had people who made the Brazilian NT, just not nearly as many as Santos did. In any case, we're talking about overall scoring. Having a couple teams who can compete with you doesn't mean your team doesn't have a hilarious advantage in the vast majority of your matches. In this case, that hilarious advantage translated into like 3.4 goals a match, which is simply ludicrously high. I'm not saying Vava is better or as good as Pelé, nor am I saying that about Toninho. So it's not about comparing 20 games of Vava to 90+ of Pelé. The point is simply that Vava replaced Pelé and scored a lot. Surely this indicates that the quality of the team around them had a big effect? And surely the fact that Vava didn't score nearly so much for Atletico Madrid as he did for the Brazilian NT also indicates that the Brazilian NT's quality inflated his scoring some? I don't think this is a particularly controversial point. We are talking about probably the greatest overall era a NT has ever had. It's not ridiculous to think that the quality of that team would inflate strikers' numbers. Vava is just an actual example I can point to where it looks like that happened. If you don't like the Vava example, then perhaps just settle on the more general logic behind the idea that Brazil was super good back then and therefore surely inflated Pelé's numbers some. I don't think this is really particularly arguable. After all, we're talking about a team that dominated a World Cup without Pelé.
Just noticed this. First of all, Edu actually scored plenty of goals for Santos. For instance, he led the 1969 Torneio Roberto Gomes Pedrosa (i.e. the direct precursor to the Brasileiro) with 14 goals in 16 matches. Edu was not some sort of pure winger for Santos. So he's not completely incomparable to Toninho's role. Second, you have narrowed your original argument to the point of being meaningless. You originally stated: "Pelé overshadowed every attacker at Santos." I proved that wrong, and now you've basically narrowed it to say that Pelé merely overshadowed people who were CFs during the era Toninho played. This is of course a ridiculous argument because Toninho is the only other CF that played for Santos in those years. So what you've actually done is basically subtly define your argument as "Pelé overshadowed Toninho and no one else." That's a meaningless argument. Your problem is that if you expand this argument any further than that, it fails. This is because other Santos attackers got recognition in Toninho's era, and other Santos CFs got recognition before Toninho got there (i.e. Coutinho, for instance).
Why do these tpmazombo master manipulation posts (lessthanjake style) have some sacred status? It is full with obvious errors. The Sao Paulo state had not 40 million people at the start of Pelé his career. It had something like 8 million, and with a heavily skewed age pyramid.
It's quite amazing how the person quoted above can act so smug after referencing a poster who made a lot of dishonest and false and misleading and incomplete claims.
Sao Paolo and 40M people. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demografia_de_São_Paulo Sao Paolo had something like 12M people in 1958, which today would be like Catalonia + Valencia. That league currently would be like this. Catalonian League (+Valencia) 1. Barcelona (1st level) 2. Valencia (1st) 3. Espanyol (1st) 4. Girona (2nd) 5. Llagostera (2nd) 6. Gimnastic (2nd) 7. Barcelona B (3rd) 8. Espanyol B (3rd) 9. Olot (3rd) 10. Badalona (3rd) 11. Sabadell (3rd) 12. Cornella (3rd) 13. L.Hospitalet (3rd) 14. Lleida (3rd) 15. P.Mafumet (3rd) 16. Reus (3rd) Imagine Messi against these week in week out.
But Botafogo didn't go on to be the signature team of Brazilian football with Intercontinental Cup wins despite having a big proportion of the stars of the NT (just not Pele). I know this point isn't specifically about scoring but more about impact (just as the argument about drawing 0-0 in the game before Pele played in the 1958 WC, not winning a WC before, losing to England in 1956, Botafogo losing to Honved about the same time etc).
Is that your team? See if you can get Messi on a Bosman and let him help you climb the leagues, so he can prove he really is the best ever!
One thing I don't get re Pele and his goal scoring is how constantly he quotes his goals scored including friendlies and everyone goes along with it (by everyone I mean commentators, press etc...) you never hear any other player do that. Can you imagine of Messi or Ronaldo started whacking another 50/60/70/80 or so on their career totals just for too boost their egos (although I am sure Ronaldo would if he could), they would be ridiculed as these were a combination of exhibitions, friendlies, warm ups etc... and no one else counts them.
I'm sorry Pipiolo, but I think it best that you read through them. They are decent pieces so you wouldn't exactly be wasting your time. As for what they talk about, it is what I mentioned in my reply to Celito after I completed listing these posts down in this thread. And I think the posts were made a long time before a lot of information was readily available on the internet. That might account for the inconsistencies in factual data. Look, I am myself not the greatest Pele fan (as a general rule I believe purer playmakers i.e. especially who operate as midfielders, are the ones who play a bigger role in making a team successful). So I take these posts with more than a pinch of salt and thus they have no sacred status with me. What you (and I hope everyone else) should consider them to represent, are points being raised by someone who knows a bit more about Pele's career than maybe you, me and a lot of other followers of football, which IMHO should be taken into account before making any sweeping generalizations regarding Pele.
Just to add on to the posts from tpmazembe that I had shared earlier, here are some things that I found after doing a bit of research on the aspect of team strength helping Pele score the way that he did: Let me preface this by saying that I am far away from being an authority on Pele, but while looking around a few things did pop-up which I believe might make substantial circumstantial points against Pele needing his teams to be uber-strong relative to the competition, as much as Messi/CRonaldo do (considering their less than stellar goal scoring records with their NTs) in order to become scoring machines. 1) Impact of Pele's arrival on Santos' goal tallies in the Paulista Source - http://www.rsssfbrasil.com/historicse.htm As can be seen above, Santos' gpg went from around 2.7 in the three years prior to Pele's arrival to around 3.8 in the immediate three seasons after he started playing in the Paulista for them. Now, the assumption here is that Pele was scoring so much because he was part of a super team. However, I think it is unlikely that the super team would score 1.1 gpg less without Pele if it was indeed the super team assisting him more, rather than the other way around. Furthermore, how many players from the Os Santasticos were part of Santos in those years? Let's look at that next. 2) Order and year of arrival of Os Santosticos players at the club Player - Year of joining Santos Zito - 1952 Pepe - 1954 Pele and Dorval - 1957 (on loan at Juventus in 1957, left for Bangu in 1961 and returned to Santos the next year) Coutinho - 1959 (joined in 1958 but seems to have played first Paulista game in the 1959 season) Mengalvio and Mauro Ramos - 1960 Gilmar - 1961 Sources - English/Portuguese language wikipedia and http://people.ufpr.br/~mmsabino/sstatistics/brasil.html From the above, it can be seen that when Pele joined Santos, it was far from having the backbone of the super team that it would go on to become by 1962. Only Pepe and Zito were there at Santos initially, and more importantly as seen in point one above, that team with them was not scoring like a super team, even if it did win its first two Paulistas in 20 years with them. 3) Impact of Pele as a player on his team's chance creation and goal scoring Now, let's see if there is any empirical evidence pointing to Pele's ability to impacting his team's goalscoring being higher than Messi/CRonaldo's, something which would support my above mentioned theory that Pele needed his teammates less than Messi/CRonaldo do to become a scoring machine. In case of Pele we have only WC stats for chances created, so if we look at those, Pele chance creation - 1970 WC - 28 chances in 6 games at 4.67 chances per game That above is a pretty elite chance creation rate. Compared to the above, Messi (who is considered to be undisputably better than CRonaldo at this measure) in WCs had the following - Messi chance creation - 2010 WC - 15 chances created in 5 games at 3.2 chances per game Messi chance creation - 2014 WC - 23 chances in 7 games at 2.97 chances per game Now of course, the above skew could be because Pele was playing for a super team in the 1970 WC and Messi was not in the 2010 and 2014 WCs. So let's see how Messi did with playing for a super team in a similar sample size of games. Messi chance creation - 2014/15 CL - 35 chances created in 12 games at 2.99 chances per game Considering the above, it is not inconceivable that Pele was able to impact Santos' goalscoring to the extent that he did. Or that he himself was less dependant on his team being a super team in order to score as much as he did, when compared to our modern duo of greats.
Messi was at the same time CL 14-15, top scorer, assister, chance creator, dribbler and through baller, actually: 14-15 League + CL Messi had most goals (excl. pen) 48 (45 Cronaldo) most assists (wide) 29 (23 Fabregas) most dribbles 267 (232 Hazard) most chance's created 131 (116 Hazard) most through balls 48 (23 Silva) Nobody in World Cup has ever been that. Kind of far cry from Pele being a top chance creator and that's it in a short tournament.
Interesting @Estel In 1957 the Paulista expanded from 14/18 teams to 20 teams. Can you correct for that in some way?
Not sure what you mean since I am looking at gpg anyway. The increased number of games through the expansion (or any additional games due to play-offs) would thus be taken care of, wouldn't they? The assumption looking at Pele's chance creation stats in the 1970 WC would be that he might have been doing all of the above at a higher level at his peak for Santos.
I don't mind that AD78 has loads of reps here and I don't lol (honestly no problem - my post isn't much!) but IMO I think both are fair points. lessthanjake (for example) would you acknowledge that? Because all of these players played for Botafogo (not all at the same time): Garrincha Didi Nilton Santos Amarildo Jairzinho Gerson Some of the Santos supporting cast were very good and stars in their own right, but Pepe, Coutinho etc didn't break through in terms of being Brazilian legends for the NT at WC's, so only Zito, goalkeeper Gilmar (from 1961) and later Carlos Alberto, other than Pele, were considered as such as Santos players. Not to say the Santos attacking line wasn't considered legendary but I'm just asking is Pele not the reason Santos formed the more legendary team than Botafogo? And his goalscoring (numbers but also the ways he could score goals) are either the biggest part of that, or he was pretty sensational outside of being a scorer I would suggest (or a little bit of both).
I do know Josef Bican was once quoted as saying "If I told people I'd scored more goals than Pele nobody would believe me" or something to that effect, perhaps after Franz Binder had suggested Bican had scored the most ever. So I do agree that Pele himself and others do go overboard with the talk of all the goals scored at times.
Well, it is possible that team goals per game go automatically up when league is expanded from 14 teams to 20 teams. So I wonder how you'd correct for that (the teams 15 to 20). I agree with the underlying proposition by the way (because when I looked at the first 14 teams for 1954 to 1959 then the same conclusion arises, albeit maybe less stark and strong).
In one of Pele's early years the season concluded with the top 10 teams playing each other twice I think didn't it? But in subsequent years what you say would apply to an extent I guess yeah - but I reckon it'd be hard to really estimate to what extent (but we could find out against who Pele scored I suppose couldn't we).
btw, sorry Clodoaldo also played for Santos of course, although like Carlos Alberto he didn't play in the period in which Santos won Intercontinental Cups. So for Santos Zito played the earlier years and Cloddoaldo the later ones as a rough guide I suppose, wheras for Botafogo it was a bit like that with Didi/Gerson and to an extent Garrincha/Jairzinho (some clear overlap in that case).