Who's the best soccer player?

Who is the known as being the best ever? To me it is Pele. If you think about it he guided Brazil to its first World Cup championship when he was only 17 years old

i have no idea, but im gonna say ronaldihnio cause he has the highest dream team value

Pele and Maradona were the best.
Now hmm,young Ronaldo?

The usual suspects, Pele, Maradona, Best, Garrincha, Beckenbauer etc.

Don't forget Johan Cruijff, Platini, Eusebio,... But Maradona is the best ever.

Harry Kewell.

Kicking ass in the world cup.

pele is the best...if young ronaldo(97?) never got injured, he had a very good chance of being the best ever

I think Maradona and Pele were the best and right now ronaldihnio is the best and future stars of soccer will be Messi and Robinho the next Maradona and Pele

Pele, Maradona, Ronaldinho, Shevchenko

Pelé, Maradona, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Platini ...

the best in the 90-2000: Matthäus (he was a beast in his prime, offensively, defensively, everywhere), Ronaldo (without injury he would be a god right now I suppose), Zidane (Oh yeah, best technique ever), Thuram (underrated, a very very good defender, keeps cool every time, and shot France into the finals), Kahn (best keeper, for sure), and many others, Raul, Shearer, Baggio , Klinsmann ....

Imo more interesting to talk about the last few generations that passed, because everybody would say the same names for the best ever without seeing them in action in their prime (or only recaps)

Pele, Maradona(don't forget the hand of god), Platini, Ronaldinho(he'll be even better), maybe Ronaldo...

Pele by far. Maradona COULD have been as great as Pele or if not greater IF he didn't get so drugged up, ruining his career.

Ronaldo recently broke Pele's record for most goals in the world cup, but you got to remember that even though Pele played in 58, 62, 66 and 70, He was mostly injured in 62 and 66. Ronaldo played the entirety of 98, 2002 and maybe 2006.

Then you have the total goals scored in his professional career, which is a figure so huge it's incredible. 1281 goals. Maradona has a mere 311 for professional clubs and 34 for Argentina. (according to wikipedia). For some reason the info in the sidebar in wiki only adds up to 1266 goals for Pele. But 1266 is huge anyhow.

Keep in mind though that Pele had 1468 total appearances(!!) whereas Maradona had only 679. (Just so you know that's 0.86 goals per match compared to Maradona's .50 goals per match)

Sadly it's hard to find video footage of Pele.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFgkzOSBA2s&search=Pele
This clip has quite a bit of his highlights.

(All the info that I calculated was found in wikipedia.)

Last edited by Bang on Tue Jun 27, 2006 6:49 am, edited 3 times in total.

Ronaldo didn't play a minute in the 94 WC And Pele had the brazilian record for most goals scored in a WC. Ronaldo is tied now with some geman dude (I can't remember the name)

EDIT: Forgot to add, I agree with your post, Bang. But the Pele vs Maradona is sometimes like Wilt vs Jordan. We'll never know.

Ronaldo didn't play a minute in the 94 WC And Pele had the brazilian record for most goals scored in a WC. Ronaldo is tied now with some geman dude (I can't remember the name)

EDIT: Forgot to add, I agree with your post, Bang. But the Pele vs Maradona is sometimes like Wilt vs Jordan. We'll never know.

Yea I forgot. Oops. Damn. I believe he's tied with Muller from West Germany/Germany.

EDIT: Forgot to add, I agree with your post, Bang. But the Pele vs Maradona is sometimes like Wilt vs Jordan. We'll never know.

hmm pele is like bill russell, won a lot with the best teams ever.
maradona is like wilt/jordan, single-handedly turning his average or below average teams into champions.

Maradona is the best player ever, even if I hate to say it because I hate him as person...
My favorite are Lothar Matthaus, Teddy Sheringham, Alan Shearer, Dennis Bergkamp, Zinedine Zidane and Gabriel Batistuta to name a few.
I think Pelé was a great player, but I haven't seen him do the things Maradona did, Pelé just got the ball near the goal and scored.

Yeah it is Gerd Müller and he is definitely the player who does not get the attention he deserves. He is the "Bomber der Nation" ="Bomber of the nation", he shot about 68 goals in 62 international appearances for Germany.

In the Bundesliga he shot 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga games, was the leading scorer in seven seasons and set a record with 40 goals.

If you compare his overall goals to Pele, he made 1455 goals in 1204 matches, thats even better than Pele.

Just a great scorer, but doesnt get the glory he deserves.

Right now, as much as I hate to say it is Ronaldinho.

The star of the near future is no doubt Cristiano Ronaldo, he is an absolute talent.

Maradona is the best player ever, even if I hate to say it because I hate him as person...
My favorite are Lothar Matthaus, Teddy Sheringham, Alan Shearer, Dennis Bergkamp, Zinedine Zidane and Gabriel Batistuta to name a few.
I think Pelé was a great player, but I haven't seen him do the things Maradona did, Pelé just got the ball near the goal and scored.

Did you see the footage from that clip I linked to? He does some amazing things in that clip. And have you seen Pele play at all? I think that's the biggest factor. People haven't seen that many clips of Pele playing. Maradona has much more footage. I haven't seen Pele play though, but Maradona can't be the best player overall since he's had a much shorter career. I'd say Maradona in his prime was probably better.

From what I've seen, Maradona was the best of all time. Nobody handled the ball like he did. But he ruined his career with drugs. It's great to see him watching and weeping when Argentina plays, though. His daughter is HOT!!!

Some other candidates:

Pele
Beckenbauer
Cruyff
Matthäus
Zidane
Milla (just for respect)

Maradona is the best player ever, even if I hate to say it because I hate him as person...
My favorite are Lothar Matthaus, Teddy Sheringham, Alan Shearer, Dennis Bergkamp, Zinedine Zidane and Gabriel Batistuta to name a few.
I think Pelé was a great player, but I haven't seen him do the things Maradona did, Pelé just got the ball near the goal and scored.

Did you see the footage from that clip I linked to? He does some amazing things in that clip. And have you seen Pele play at all? I think that's the biggest factor. People haven't seen that many clips of Pele playing. Maradona has much more footage. I haven't seen Pele play though, but Maradona can't be the best player overall since he's had a much shorter career. I'd say Maradona in his prime was probably better.

I didn't see many Pelé videos and that's a shame, but I've seen Maradona clips from when he was a kid (I think he was 16), playing for Argentinos Jrs. and when he played for Boca, he was GREAT, I mean not the player you see one time doing great things and then in another game he doesn't do shit, he was great in all his games and the best thing was that he was actually a good person, too bad he's an ass now... He ruined his life and career when he moved from Barcelona to Naples. He first took drugs in Naples, and I'm pretty ashamed to live in the same country of those undecent people.
I think he's the best player ever, but I didn't see many footages of Pelé, so I think I'll watch more stuff about him before rating. Anyways if I have to rate Maradona as a person, I'd probably say he's an ignorant person who thinks he's god and destroys life and career of young and not that young players (I think you already know about the thing of Veròn, Zanetti and Samuel. They don't play this World Cup because Maradona has too many powers inside the national team and the AFA, and because they play/have played in Inter and Maradona hasn't got good relationships with Inter. Veròn actually said to Maradona that he was an asshole and I've got mad respect to Veròn for that).

Maradona Or Pele
i also like Eusebio,Platini,Baggio etc.

Grzegorz Lato, and Zibi Boniek if theese names give you anything...

It's ludicrous to leave out the all-time leading world up goal scorer Ronaldo out of any best ever conversation...despite his current girth.

Zidane, Beckenbauer, Ronaldinho....Ronaldo has scored the most goals this world cup hasn't he?