Pele: The King of football

Greatness is often quantified in numbers. Nadia Comenaci is the Miss Perfect 10 of the 1976 Montreal Games. Pete Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slam titles is the benchmark all tennis stars aspire to beat. Then, of course, the greatest statistical marvel of all time, Sir Donald Bradman’s Test batting average of 99.94.

There's another figure just as astonishing but surprisingly, it's the least talked about and rarely used as a measure to describe the man-in-question's greatness. 1283 — the number of goals Pele scored in his professional career, ranging 21 years.

I wasn't lucky to live in the times of Pele. It was only three years after his retirement in 1977 that my parents united in holy matrimony. I took another two years coming. My experience of his genius has been second hand but I am no less mesmerised.

Interestingly, 1283 is the number mentioned by Pele in his autobiography. FIFA has the number as 1281, recognised as the highest total achieved by a professional footballer.

There is no doubting the credibility of all of these goals as they have been checked by more than one recognised statistical institution. But there has been a dispute whether the number is much exaggerated because Pele played, between 1957 and 1973, not just in official championships but also in short-term international tournaments between European and South American teams. Some say goals scored in those tournaments should not count because these games were ‘friendlies’.

I've never had such doubts. You can say I am a believer and when the great Pele says its 1283, it's 1283 for me.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, as his parents, João Ramos do Nascimento and Maria Celeste Arantes, christened him, scored his first professional goal on the 134th anniversary of Brazil’s independence — September 7, 1956.

Santos had signed him on as a 15-year-old and after a month of training with the senior team, he was given a chance to play. The game was against Corinthians, a small team from Santo Andre, not the Corinthians Paulista that we know, who are from Sao Paulo. Pele came on in the second half and scored soon after. In his autobiography, he writes,

"Almost as soon as I came on I scored my first ‘official’ goal — the first in the tally that ended up at over 1280. Pepe (teammate) had taken a shot, the keeper knocked it out and I got it on the rebound. I was ecstatic, and ran around punching the air with delight. It was beyond a dream."

Interestingly, the Corinthians’ goalkeeper Zaluar turned out to be happier than Pele was. Years later, he made a business card that announced him as the ‘Goalkeeper who let in Pele's first goal’.

Pele's last goal came 21 years later on October 1, 1977, three weeks before his thirty-seventh birthday. It was his farewell game for Cosmos, the American club he signed for in 1975. There were 75,000 people at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey. The game was Cosmos versus Santos. (Santos was Pele’s first and only other club). He played the first half for Cosmos, and scored. In the second half, he played for Santos. Cosmos won that game 2-1.

At the party after the match, many greats gathered to bid goodbye to the ‘best footballer there ever was’. Muhammad Ali, the world boxing champion, was one of them. Ali cried, hugged Pele and said, ‘Now there are two of the greatest.’