#4 Pele
What: 1)Most career goals (football)
2)Most number of World cup won by a player (football)
Where: Brazil and the USA
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, or simply Pele, needs no introduction. He is ‘O Rei do Futebol’ (The king of Football). Considered by many to be simply the greatest player ever to grace the game, he is celebrated as God in Brazil where Football is a religion.
Being an accomplished player, he set and broke numerous records throughout his career, but in that plethora of records, one record specifically stands out. That record is MOST CAREER GOALS (FOOTBALL).
Yes, it is Pele who has scored most number of goals in football. To be precise, Pele scored 1,279 goals from 7 Sep 1956 to 1 Oct 1977 in 1,363 games, which included unofficial friendlies and tour games.
His best year was 1959 with 126 goals to his name, and the Milésimo (1000th) came from a penalty for his club Santos at the Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, on 19 Nov 1969 when playing his 909th first-class match.
Of the 1279 goals scored by him, 619 have come while playing for Santos and 31 while playing for New York Cosmos. He also plundered 77 goals for Brazil in 91 appearances. To put it in perspective, current top scorers in the world, Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, have yet to reach 600 career goals. It is these records of such magnitude that act as certification for Pele’s greatness.
His greatness also propelled the Brazilian team to new a greatness. They went on to win five different editions of World cup and thus becoming the most successful team in the tournament’s rich history. Pele was part of three Brazilian world cup winning teams, thus making him a Guinness World record holder for PLAYER WITH MOST WORLD CUP WINS (FOOTBALL).
