Flashback: Recalling Pele breaking 1,000-goal barrier by age of 29
Edson Arantes do Nascimento known as 'Pele' (1940–2022) is an absolute legend of football history. He won the World Cup three times with the Brazilian national team (1958, 1962, 1970) and was named the best player of the 20th century. Pele won an enormous number of team and individual trophies and awards and scored countless goals.
He scored his 1,000th goal in his club Santos' match against Vasco da Gama when he netted a penalty kick. After he scored, many of the 80,000 fans flocked to the pitch to be even closer to the crucial moment of football history.
It is important to mention that these people were of course mostly home fans of Vasco da Gama, the team from Rio de Janeiro where the match was played.
Pele was celebrated even by the players of the opposing team. The Vasco da Gama goalkeeper, after conceding a goal from Pele's penalty, took off his jersey to reveal a congratulatory message written on a t-shirt underneath.
Pele scored the vast majority of his goals in the jersey of Santos, a club from Sao Paolo. Later on in his career, he scored goals in the United States, where he played for the New York Cosmos and, of course, he also scored plenty of goals for the Brazilian national team.
He was Brazil’s all-time leading scorer for a long time. In 92 games for the Selecao, he scored 77 goals (which is a ratio of 0.84 goals per match). In 2023, however, Pele's record was equalled and subsequently surpassed by Neymar (who currently has 79 goals in 128 matches at a ratio of 0.62 goals per match).
The leading goalscorer of all time?
Pele stopped at 1,281 goals (in 1,363 matches). That is the number recognized by FIFA at least. Controversially, that also includes numerous friendly and unofficial matches. However, they were a very common and also very competitive part of football in past times. As a result, it is simply impossible to accurately compare who the leading goalscorer of all time is.
Czech legend Josef Bican also scored many goals. Regarding Bican, who represented both Czechoslovakia and Austria internationally, the statistics differ even more. According to research by the RSSSF (Rec. Sport Soccer Statistics Foundation), an organization described by German newspaper Der Spiegel as a 'Wikipedia of football statistics', Bican scored over 950 goals (in 624 matches). Another source even states that he scored up to 1,813 goals (across 1,089 appearances).
For Pele, as well as for Bican, there is the problem with which matches to take into account and also with the unreliability of their statistics. Both were undoubtedly great goalscorers, but if we really only take into account officially recorded matches (although it needs to be emphasized again that this is a bit unclear regarding both Pele and Bican), the leading goalscorers in football history are Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
According to the IFFHS (The International Federation of Football History & Statistics), Ronaldo currently has 910 goals (in 1,245 matches) while Messi has 850 goals (in 1,082 matches). According to the IFFHS statistics, Pele is in third place (762 goals), Romario is fourth (756), Ferenc Puskas is fifth (725), and Bican is sixth (722).
November 19th: The day of goal-machines
Today, November 19th, is apparently the fateful day of record-breaking goals. On this day in 1960, Jimmy Greaves (whose story was already covered in a Flashback earlier this year) scored a hat-trick for Chelsea in their 6-3 win over Manchester City in a First Division fixture at Stamford Bridge. In doing so he scored his 100th league goal and, at 20 years 290 days old, he became the youngest player ever to score 100 top-flight goals in England.
There are only a few players who have reached 100 goals faster than Greaves - but also in this case, there is a problem with statistics. Certainly, one of them is Pele. The magical Brazilian scored his 100th goal for Santos in his 81st game on November 5th, 1958. He was 18 years and 13 days old.
Another player who very quickly reached the 100-goal mark, and even in the jersey of the same club and the same national team, Santos and Brazil, was the aforementioned Neymar, who scored his 100th goal on his 20th birthday.
And you must be wondering how quickly Erling Haaland, the biggest scoring talent of today, reached the milestone of 100 goals... In his case, it was also very quickly. He scored his 100th goal while still playing for Borussia Dortmund at the age of 20 years and 228 days.
