Do you guys Think messi And C Ronaldo are the top 2 best players of all time.I haven't watched players like pele, Johan Cruyff, Alfredo Di Stéfano and Diego Maradona.They is many other but this are the few i can think.So i would like to hear what you guys think, Messi and C Ronaldo career aren't over and thats why nobody makes this claim but if they retire everyone would included.This is not a debate about Messi and C ronaldo.

Pele is the best, without any doubts.

why??? Pele didn't play in europe,the only thing he got on them is world cups ,pele scored 1,283 goals but 526 goals came in unofficial friendlies and tour games.He also played with amazing people on his world cup.The offside rule wasn't implicated.

Here we go again! :P

Essays incoming, hold your fire!

Essays incoming, hold your fire!

Eh, not from me.

I never saw Pele play. I can't relate how good he was compared to his time as Ronaldo/Messi are to theirs. Sometimes it is best to just let legends be legends. Jesse Owens is remembered as a fantastic sprinter, and Mohammed Ali as a fantastic boxer. If you think any above-average athlete these days in their respective sports wouldn't thrash them, you're ignoring quantitative data such as 100-meter times.

You respect how much an athlete rose above those around them. The very term "legend" exists because it is arbitrary. You cannot measure legend, they are above metrics, they are larger than life itself. They simply are, and that is all there is to it.

Here we go with the Pele debate again

@Sunflash Holy tomato, that was beautiful mate. +1

Jesse Owens is remembered as a fantastic sprinter, and Mohammed Ali as a fantastic boxer. If you think any above-average athlete these days in their respective sports wouldn't thrash them, you're ignoring quantitative data such as 100-meter times.

That doesn't need to apply to football and maybe even other team sports like basketball where in the past, players needed to be more resilient and more tough because unlike in individual competitions such as running or boxing, team sports are not all about having the physical advantage.

In the case of Pelé, he was very well built and strong as the videos I posted show, basically he had no weakness as a player and could take hard hits that top players of today wouldn't be able to take.
He had the technique, pace, jump, both feet super strong so pretty much everything you can think of, he could do it and that's without having any advantages of what players have today, from equipment to modern trainings and medicine.

The world is different today as a whole, let alone football but when all things considered Pelé was just above everyone else and way ahead of his time, there is more than enough evidence of how skilled and strong he was and how appreciated he was as well by others.
Maradona who is his rival even today in everyones minds have said about the people that voted for him ahead of Pelé that:"Those who voted for me didn't see Pelé play".

I don't think they would be first and second. Maybe First and fifth but I can't say which way round as it has been forbidden to compare the two of them on here! :D

I think messi and cr7 are top 3 pele,messi and ronaldo

@SunFlash

I agree to an extent. Comparing athletes now and athletes then is really a waste of time since nutrition, technology, and education have changed a lot in the past few decades.

If you think any above-average athlete these days in their respective sports wouldn't thrash them, you're ignoring quantitative data such as 100-meter times.

I have a feeling you'd be interested in this, @Sun, but I highly suggest everyone watch this video.

The video is good but doesn't adress football so it's not really making any conclusions, things simply developed.
A player from the past that was talented and made it in those conditions, would make it today even easier and he would have an even better performance, same can't be said the other way around.

I have a feeling you'd be interested in this, @Sun, but I highly suggest everyone watch this video.

I'd not actually seen that video before, and I thank you for sharing it. I believe you guys know that I'm in Human Kinetics in university, and the topic of the sprinting tracks actually came up during a lecture once, though not in regard to Owens, but to Ancient Greek sprinters, who started the race very differently. Our professor pointed out that you could put Usian Bolt on this Ancient Olympiad track and he would probably lose to a bunch of guys born over 3000 years ago. He simply isn't designed for a turn, a start that doesn't require a pushoff, and a lack of lanes that means running into one another is perfectly acceptable.

I don't think it would be that different to apply this to Owens. Owens was an amazingly successful sprinter, and did it with a certain surface. If he had trained his whole life on a different surface, there is no guarantee he would hold to the a standard adaption of the mathematical figure pointed out in the video. And even if he did (which would be really impressive), he still isn't the fastest man there. Genetic differences have a massive factor as well. However, if your point was that saying an above-average athlete would thrash him is unfair, I think I would probably agree. However on the truly top level between Bolt and Owens, or Pele and Messi/Ronaldo, there is still a difference, and it's decently significant. Half a second is a massive amount of time in sprinter time. Even in the video he pointed out that someone with the same equipment as the man cycling was able to perform to a higher standard, and somehow I doubt that man put in the 10k+ hours that is generally accepted by sports scientists to be the minimum time spent training to achieve mastery.

In regards to soccer, there is an added component that is not measurable, and that is tactics. 100 meters is 100 meters. A goalkeeper from the 1960's who drinks beer after, before, and during every game like many of those Pele would have faced is not David De Gea. As noted in the video, that average size of athletes has improved regarding their respective roles. Try playing FIFA 18 and finding a goalkeeper under 6'3. It's probably 1 in 10 or less. In the 1960's it wouldn't surprise me if over 70% of the keepers were below that size.

In the end, it was a different time. Different circumstances. You can speculate, but the reality is that they wouldn't be as good today. So comparing is largely arbitrary. If you can't come to a definitive conclusion, why start the debate?

Thanks for the video though, it was a good watch. This is a topic I do enjoy quite thoroughly, so if you want to talk more about it I'm down.

@Sun No problem dude. As you can probably imagine I'm not knowledgeable in that field. I just wanted to see what were your thoughts on the video. In terms of comparisons like I said above, I think they are pointless but good fun if discussed correctly.

This is a topic I do enjoy quite thoroughly, so if you want to talk more about it I'm down.

For sure bro. If I need some info regarding this topic, I know who to talk to :)

A goalkeeper from the 1960's who drinks beer after, before, and during every game like many of those Pele would have faced is not David De Gea.

Stop assuming things to make the past look so much worse when that's not even close to any reality.

As noted in the video, that average size of athletes has improved regarding their respective roles. Try playing FIFA 18 and finding a goalkeeper under 6'3. It's probably 1 in 10 or less. In the 1960's it wouldn't surprise me if over 70% of the keepers were below that size.

Some of the best goalkeepers of all time were tall and some were shorter, doesn't prove that it would be much harder for someone like Pepe or easier, Lev Yashin played at that time and he was around 1.9 cm tall thats taller than some legendary goalkeepers that came later like Oliver Kahn,Bartez and so on...

I mean Buffon is 1.91 that's the same as someone like Yashin that played in the 60's so your argument doesn't work, De Gea is 1.92 that's not a big difference from someone like Yashin, one of the most respected goalkeepers is Casillas and he is around 1.81 cm tall so was Peruzzi both amazing goalkeepers in the modern time so that argument of how it would have been harder for Pele because goalkeepers are taller is invalid, simple as that, someone like Petr Cech didn't concide a goal vs Messi in Chelsea but then moved to Arsenal and Messi scored against him, so was it because he was tall or because of the team where he played in? It also took alot of time for him to score vs Buffon but he's shorter than Cech so it's not all about the size that is the main factor.

Using your opinion I can make the argument that Pele being taller than Messi would make him better because Ronaldo as taller than Messi could score much easier vs tall Goalkeepers such as Buffon and Cech so going by size it's actually Pele that would have an advantage being just a bit taller than Messi and being able to jump higher and guard the ball easier, people forget that Pele was a classic 10 player.

You can speculate, but the reality is that they wouldn't be as good today.

Again you speculate but have no proof of that, the videos I posted show a different story, if Pele was able to do all that stuff back then he would have done them even easier with a better ball, shoes, better training and conditions that the current techology gives and so on...If anything a player like Messi would never be a football player in the past because only modern medicine helped him to overcome his problems and become a pro player, and one big thing that the video doesn't really deal with is the drugs and doping that is present in the Olympics today like never before.

Your entire post is summarized quite well by your final paragraph, so I'll just focus on that.

Again you speculate but have no proof of that, the videos I posted show a different story, if Pele was able to do all that stuff back then he would have done them even easier with a better ball, shoes, better training and conditions that the current techology gives and so on...If anything a player like Messi would never be a football player in the past because only modern medicine helped him to overcome his problems and become a pro player, and one big thing that the video doesn't really deal with is the drugs and doping that is present in the Olympics today like never before.

As I've said before, it's impossible to know. When looking at sport history, the athletes that were often the most successful were the ones doing things that were simply superior to what everyone else was doing regarding diet, training, etc. For example, an athlete that trained everyday, didn't drink alcohol, and was a vegetarian would gain much more in relation towards everyone else in 1960 than they would in 2017. The entire concept of the "who wants it more" mindsets is largely based on this. It makes players like George Best and Ronaldinho even more impressive because they didn't do those things.

Since you seem to have a lot of problems with what I'm saying, I'll just play down to the average:

Do you think the average player is better today, or sixty years ago?

I think this goes without saying. So then we can infer that the competition is superior today. Therefore to perform to a similar standard to elite players in the past, the level of current elite must be higher.

Basically, the argument looks like this:

Premise 1: The average player is better today than in 1960
Premise 2: Therefore performing today requires a higher level of skill than in 1960
Conclusion 1: The elite players of today are better than the elite players on 1960

I don't see anything wrong with that. As for the question of it you gave Pele from birth all of the equipment and training of modern day athletes, we honestly can't ever know. So I don't even try to compare in an arbitrary manner. Like I said in the first post, respect the legend.

If a top talent like Pele could make it when the conditions were harder there is the argument that he would be able to do the same or better in the conditions of todays game.

The rules of the game today protect the star players as well, someone that fouled Pele in his time would maybe end a career of some star player of today.

It's easier to score goal today than before and the game rules of today would give an even bigger advantage to someone like Pele.

It's like when people say that baseball players today are better than the ones from the past, sure physically but the rules changed and the simple specification of roles show that a player from the past could do it all while today players are good in one role but suck in another.

The point is that Pele played with the best and was the best among them, the definition of his role did not change at all over the years as well.

He is a legend but by no means inferior to anyone after him, if anything he had more to his game than Maradona and Messi and he was able to make things happen even when there were no red cards as a rule.

Just to see his goal from the World Cup final, he was 17 at the time and could do that, shows that class is permanent.

And that's wonderful, but it's all theoretical.

I guess the best way to outline it is that if Pele played soccer in the modern era, using modern practices (training, etc), he would have been a superior player to his 1960 self. You agree with this, based on your posts. But we can't know or even try to compare how he relates to modern day players. And in the end, that's all there is to it.

Going beyond a sport, you could easily say that if you or I were born/grew up in Syria, we'd probably be leading pretty different lives right now. But it's impossible to know if it would be better or worse (Alex, I'm going to go with worse), but we certainly agree that we couldn't measure or compare the level of worse compared to our current situations without real data. Which we don't have. Because we weren't born/grew up in Syria. That's roughly what we're discussing here.

@Golazo @Sun At the end of the day, this whole discussion of Pele or Maradona vs Messi or Ronaldo is technically pointless. No argument you will be able to give will ever be able to be considered like any proof, the only way to compare would have been for them to play at the same time and even then, it wouldn't have been enough, its like the whole Ronaldo vs Messi debate, no way to find true proof of which is best and no way to convince someone who believe one is better. So yeah, you can enjoy debating this as much as you want, but at the end of the day, it won't change much in term of fact. :(