The Greatest Goal Pele Ever Scored, Recreated

Have you ever had a really great idea, but then forgot to write it down? Well, Pele scored the best goal of his career, but no one recorded it.
October 7, 2014

Pele is a legend. There is no disputing this, regardless of whether or not you think he is the greatest player of all time.

Sporting legends, however, usually have to deal with a much lower degree of hear-say in the chronicling of their career. The story of Pele’s life will never change by word-of-mouth as much as, say, Beowulf’s, but as this next video will show, that doesn’t mean that the soccer star’s storied career is not with out its fair share of, well, stories.

 

And lots of those stories were about goals. Pele scored over 619 goals during his time at Brazilian club Santos - plus 108 more for the Brazilian national team and the New York Cosmos. So, it's understandably hard to pick the story of just one goal as the best of his career.

That is, until you hear this story. In 1959 the 18-year-old Pele was playing Brazilian rival Atletico Juventus in front of only 7,000 people . In this match the “Black Pearl” is rumored to have scored the greatest goal of his career. From the retelling, below is a diagram that shows just how great it actually was:

(Image: @marcosousa | Twitter)

A diagram is fine and good, but it doesn't really inspire the imagination of the general public, especially in the day and age of YouTube. So, for your viewing pleasure, we have here a reproduction of the goal that Pele scored as an 18-year-old in Brazil. How was it reproduced? CGI. What was it reproduced from? Well, apparently from eyewitness accounts and from the word of Pele himself. He wouldn’t embellish anything, would he?

 

Related: Rare Footage Of The 10 Most Amazing Goals Pele Ever Scored

Suspending our disbelief for the moment, this goal is absolutely incredible. Every one of Pele’s touches deserves an “Ole!,” and to round the keeper like that is incredible. But…

At the end of the day this is all hear-say, and while we do not think the people who contributed to this video are inherently untrustworthy, who wouldn’t want to make it seem like they saw the best goal of Pele’s career?

But maybe, in the end, it's better as a story anyways.