A question about FiFa all time greatest player award:

[roni10_levi]

I have a little question for you:when FiFa desided(in 2000?) to give the "greatest player of all time" title to Maradona and Pele,how did they do this?I mean,how many FiFA experts desided it and how did they exactlly do their ranking?I hope you understand my question.it's very simple-how many experts in FiFA made this decision and how they did it(after all,FiFA does include many people,and it's seem to be complicated?)?
thank's...

[almilan]

as far as i remember maradona won the fans vote but the fifa executives wanted the more 'respectable' pele

[roni10_levi]

I know Maradona was voted in an Internet poll as the best ever,and Pele won an award from FIFA.so my question is only about the award FIFA gave to Pele.how FIFA made the common decision to give the title to Pele?I mean,how many FIFA experts(aproximatelly) have made that vote/decision?around 100?around 200?less than 100?...

[MVB]

It has been taken for granted that Pele is the greatest of all time beyond a shadow of a doubt. To many football historian who followed football in the 60s and 70s, Pele has no equal. Therefore the FIFA greatest player award is by default belong to Pele. However, when the internet poll results came out, everybody in FIFA freaked out and even Pele & his millions of devotees freak out. That clearly showed how professional and the type of people who run FIFA are. If you want Pele to win, why bother with the poll?

I certainly did not think Pele is the greatest of all time. In fact I think there's no player that can be place in that honour. This is simply because football is a team game. Just because you are the star player doesn't mean you win the game on your own. The closest a player that achieve that is Maradona in 86 WC. But don't forget there are 10 other player in the line-up as well.

But there truely great players that have contributed to the game like Pele and Maradona. So there are Great footballer no greatest for me.

However, there are greatest team and in my opinion, I have not seen a better team than AC Milan 1988 to 1994. At the end of the day it just a matter of opinion. By the way, I would pick Maradona in my team, Pele might make it to the bench.

[ukrainian_CA]

It has been taken for granted that Pele is the greatest of all time beyond a shadow of a doubt. To many football historian who followed football in the 60s and 70s, Pele has no equal. Therefore the FIFA greatest player award is by default belong to Pele. However, when the internet poll results came out, everybody in FIFA freaked out and even Pele & his millions of devotees freak out. That clearly showed how professional and the type of people who run FIFA are. If you want Pele to win, why bother with the poll?


The internet polls skew, not to say screw up, the real (stress on 1st syllable)
distribution of values because of the "selection problem".
In this case the selection is obvious:
People who go to interenet polls are much younger; and the people who saw and remember Pele are outnumbered and ... do not use internet polls.

[nefremo]

The game has evolutionzied so much. Everything is more tactical and so much evolved around passing. When Pele played, some of the keepers did not even have golves. It is ridicilus. I did not have the privilage of seeing this guy play live as I have only seen tapes and glimpses of his brilliance. However...if Pele played in today's football, I doubt he would be the best in the world. He would ofcourse blend in with the best, but it would be hard to single him out as the best of all time. The game is just so much more different and it demands so much more. I have seen a lot of games from Pele's time. As I said...not live but on tapes....and comparing that football with the one today...I must say it looks more like amateur stuff.

[pa7uel]

And another problem is that most of Pele games in Brazil (and this is true told by himself) that were broadcast, where erased from their tapes to record TV novels. If you didnt know TV novels in Brazil can get as popular as football sometimes and even some important football games change there schedule because of them, ive seen it some times in the Libertadores Cup.
In my opinion Maradona played in the toughest league in the world (italian) and not only he did it good, also he was champion with a team like Napoli that wasnt (and isnt) one of the most powerfull of Italy.
Pele played only in the brazilian league and in a time that there where so much more saces to play and, yes it wasnt the level of competition that there was in Diego's time.
One thing i have to recognice is that Pele won 3 World Cups, he played his first one being 18 years old, and that's something remarcable in any time.
The thing is, if you ask Argentinians we will say the greatest was Maradona( at least most of us), if you ask Brazilians most of them will say Pele, and if you ask spanish for example they would say DiStefano, and he played before Pele, so the time where anyone played doesnt matter, and if you where good to the pint that people can remember it you dont need to see a tape.
I will remember Maradona as the greatest, those who saw Pele will remember him and i dont know maybe the next generation will remember Ronaldinho as the greatest.
Maybe in the future the discussion would be ''Ronaldinho or Messi''