Pele or Maradona, who was actually the greater player when you strip away the eras

[ThoughtVector]

Long before Messi and Ronaldo turned football's greatest of all time argument into a modern obsession, the debate belonged to Pele and Diego Maradona, two players separated by roughly two decades of football history but forever linked by their claim to the title. Pele won three World Cups with Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970, a record that stands unmatched to this day and one that came while playing in an era of comparatively minimal protection for attacking players against far rougher defensive treatment than the modern game allows.

Maradona, by contrast, has one World Cup to his name from 1986, but the manner in which he delivered it has become the stuff of genuine footballing legend, single handedly dragging a modest Argentina squad to the trophy with a run of individual performances, most famously the quarter final against England featuring both the Hand of God goal and the Goal of the Century within the same four minutes of play, that remains one of the most complete individual tournament efforts the sport has ever witnessed.

The comparison always runs into the same difficulty, that Pele's peak years are preserved mostly in grainy black and white footage from a completely different footballing world, while Maradona's genius was captured in far greater technical detail and with the added mythology of his career's dramatic highs and equally dramatic personal struggles alongside it. Which of the two would you actually take if you could pick one of them in their absolute prime for a single decisive match?

[Tundra54]

Three World Cups will always be the trump card for Pele in this argument no matter how legendary that 1986 Maradona run was. Winning it once brilliantly is remarkable, winning it three times across three different decades is a completely different order of sustained greatness.