Mykola Neseniuk: "Pele and his "thousand"

Famous Ukrainian journalist Mykola Nesenyuk dedicated a Facebook post to the scoring achievements of the greats.

Mykola Neseniuk

After the famous Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 900th goal and this achievement was declared a record, the question arose about the Brazilian "king of football" Edson Arantes to Nascimento, better known by his nickname "Pele". I was in the fifth grade when we were told that the aforementioned Pele had scored his thousandth goal. Even then, the number caused me some distrust. It was confirmed by a young French teacher named Moshniaga, whom I asked for advice. This teacher regularly read the French newspaper L'Humanite, which was then freely sold in the kiosks of our city, and knew a lot of different things. He explained that Pele's "thousand" included everything he scored in his life, starting with children's teams, including unofficial games, the protocols of which were either not preserved or did not exist at all. Later, in the nineties, when I bought my younger son the Guinness Book of World Records, he read that Pele scored not a thousand but 1279 goals.

Now I found out that Pele scored less than Ronaldo - only 762 goals. Where did the other 517 go? They must have counted them differently. Just like in that joke when the representative of the smartest nation answered the question of how much is two plus two: "Are we buying or selling?". Obviously, the semi-mythical number of goals scored by Pele, which used to bother no one, has come into conflict with modern marketing. Because it is impossible to score so many goals in reality, which means that outstanding footballers of the present and future will have to live in the shadow of that cunningly calculated thousand-plus goals of the legendary Brazilian. As a result, the goals were recalculated in a new way, including only those scored in official top-level matches. And everything has taken on its current form: Ronaldo is the owner of a record that is quite understandable and that the Norwegian Erling Holland may well surpass someday.

It seemed that everything was clear. Pele, with his mythical thousand, remained in ancient history, and Ronaldo became the hero of our time. But, as for me, it's not that simple. It is possible that somewhere in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sol or some other local team there is a striker named Lopez, Gomez or Rodriguez who has scored more goals in official matches of local competitions than Cristiano Ronaldo, and all this is recorded in the protocols with signatures and seals. Why is his achievement worse? Who measured the level of the competition, and how did they measure the goals that can be used to set a record? The rules are the same everywhere, and a football player from a small town team where he scored a hundred goals a year can be invited to a big club. So should these goals be counted or not? There is no objective answer to this question and there cannot be. Everyone is free to do the math by making a table of goals scored records and consider either Pele with his thousand, or Ronaldo with his nine hundred, or someone else to be the record holder.

Interestingly, this has very little to do with football itself. Because everyone who has played football at least a little bit knows that it's not the player who scores, it's the team! And the lists of scorers and all these records exist exclusively for the public, just like football "kings," "princes," and all the rest.

Mykola NESENYUK