Pele, a legendary football player from Brazil, died on Thursday at the age of 82 after a battle with Conal cancer. The football legend’s health had gotten worse a few days earlier, and his doctors had advised him to have treatment for kidney and heart failure.
One of the best players to ever set foot on a football ground is Pele, whose true name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento. He is the only player to have won three FIFA World Cup trophies in 1958, 1962, and 1970. The football player also boasts multiple trophies for his club and country.
Pele is the second-most successful Brazilian at the FIFA World Cup, scoring 12 goals in 14 games over four tournaments. He also holds the record for being the youngest player to score in a men’s FIFA World Cup, doing it against Wales in the tournament’s quarterfinals in 1958 at 17 years and 239 days.
Pele has scored 680 club football goals in official games at the club level. Santos scored a remarkable 643 goals in domestic competitions (at the national and state levels), the Copa Libertadores, and the Intercontinental Cup (the forerunner of the FIFA Club World Cup).
This talented player made his Sao Paulo club debut at age 15, and from 1956 to 1974, he remained faithful to the team throughout most of his career. The number of games he played for Santos is disputed among sources, with some putting it at 659 and others saying it was 665.
For the three years he played for the New York Cosmos in the US, Pele scored all 37 of his subsequent goals. He joined the club at age 35 in 1975, playing 64 official matches until 1977.
FIFA has started referring to his goal total as “more than 1,200” in recent years. Pele claims that his final goal total was 1,283. However, the RSSF again enters the equation with 1,303 goals in 1,392 games.