Edson Arantes do Nascimento · Brazil
Photo : CC0 1.0 — Joop van Bilsen / Anefo, Nationaal Archief (Netherlands)
Pelé is the only footballer to have won three World Cups, and he did it as a teenager, as a champion in his prime, and as the leader of the team most people still call the best ever assembled. He scored twice in the 1958 final at seventeen. Twelve years later, in Mexico, he set up Carlos Alberto for the goal that closed the argument about what Brazilian football could look like.
What separates him from the players who followed is the scale of the club numbers. He spent nineteen seasons at Santos and scored 569 goals in 583 competitive appearances — a strike rate no forward has sustained over a career of that length since. Santos toured the world to cash in on him, and he played through it, often several matches a week, on pitches that bore little resemblance to a modern surface.
He left for the New York Cosmos in 1975, at a point when American soccer had almost no professional foothold. Two years and 64 appearances later, the North American Soccer League had crowds it had never drawn before and a generation of American children who had watched a World Cup winner in person. Much of what the modern MLS was built on started there.
Club career
| Years | Club | Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1956–1974 | Santos | 583 | 569 |
| 1975–1977 | New York Cosmos | 64 | 37 |
| Total | 647 | 606 |
International career
| Years | Team | Caps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1957–1971 | Brazil | 92 | 77 |
Honours
Dashed = runner-up.
Related legends
Career figures compiled from public records. Competitive senior appearances only.