In November 2005, back when the football world would struggle to find Qatar on a map, two
men walked on to a stage outside the capital Doha to a thousand flash bulbs.
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, or Pele to the rest of the world, and Diego Armando Maradona
both stood in front of a crowd of journalists and TV cameras to mark the opening of Qatar's
Aspire Academy. They took in the applause and the adulation and, for a brief few moments,
embraced warmly.
Or, at least, it appeared so.
The two had a notoriously fractious relationship over the previous decades. But the Qatari
government had found a natural balm to that hostility: money, and lots of it.
The pair had been paid handsomely – a rumoured half a million dollars each from Qatar's almost
bottomless pit of natural gas-funded riches – to mark the opening of what looked like
a hi-tech leisure centre.
Over the previous days Maradona had played exhibition matches against kids (slide-tackling
a child, leaving him in a crying heap on the floor) whilst Pele made various public appearances
around the city, before being whisked off for a private audience with Qatar's Emir.
The climax was their meeting on stage to participate in a debate on the nature of sportsmanship.
But that wasn't what the Qataris were paying for. No, everyone was there to see the men
discuss the issue that had come to define their relationship.
Who was the best player of all time: Pele or Maradona?
Before the seemingly never-ending online war between Messi and Ronaldo stans, the debate
over the merits of Pele versus Maradona was a modern tale for an analogue age.
Pele was arguably football's first global superstar, a black player who had risen above
Brazil's stark racial divisions and poverty to become an international icon. He won three
World Cups, including an iconic title at Mexico 1970. It was the first finals televised live
and in colour, bringing Brazil's canary yellow shirts blazing into people's front rooms.
He scored a record 1,281 goals in 1,363 games for Santos, Brazil and, later, at the New
York Cosmos. He was a gentleman whose talent transcended the need to barrack or cheat.
Maradona was arguably the first superstar of football's modern age. Born into poverty
in Argentina, he escaped the barrio and made it to Boca Juniors and then Barcelona, becoming
an international sensation. He wasn't just loved by Argentinians. He was deified. He
almost single-handedly won his country the 1986 World Cup, almost repeating the feat
at Italia 1990. Unlike Pele, he would star in Europe, especially at Napoli where he arrived
at an unfancied team and was adored for delivering two Scudettos. But cocaine was his weakness.
Scandal after scandal destroyed his career.
The two met in 1979 and were initially on friendly terms although that changed as Maradona's
fame exploded and the comparisons began, rooted in a much deeper rivalry between Brazil and
Argentina. A series of snubs and counter snubs during the 1980s, culminated in two competing
autobiographies released in the same year.
In his autobiography “Yo Soy Diego” [I am Diego] Maradona placed Pele top of his
list of the 100 greatest players of all time, but also took a swipe at him over the death
of Garrincha, who had drunk himself to death once his playing career had finished. “I'd
like to have seen him look after Garrincha and not let him die in misery. I'd like to
see him fight the rich and powerful that are damaging football.”
There had also been salacious rumours about Pele's sexuality. In 'Pele: His Life and Times'
written with veteran British journalist Harry Harris, Celso Grellet – a close friend responsible
for Pele's global image – traced the insinuations back to Maradona.
“There is no doubt from my point of view that Maradona has made ludicrous accusations,
the one about Pele's sexuality being just one of many, as a result of pure envy … Maradona
was very jealous of Pelé and has been ever since Carlos Menem, the former Argentine president,
invited Pele to the country as his special guest because Pele was his favourite player.
It angered Maradona that the Argentine people might place Pele above him.”
And then, in 2000, FIFA threw petrol on the fire by announcing a new “Player of the
Century” award. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The winner would
be decided by a public vote through FIFA.com, a relatively new concept in online democracy.
It wasn't even close. Maradona won 53.6 per cent of the vote with Pele a distant second,
with 18.5 per cent. Portugal's Eusebio was third.
The result was a scandal in Brazil. It didn't go down well at FIFA's headquarters in Zurich,
either.
Maradona had only been retired three years, after a succession of drug scandals. He'd
ballooned in size and already had his first heart attack. Pele, on the other hand, was
a more clean-cut ambassador, who had even been appointed sports minister in Brazil.
So, FIFA created a “Football Family” award, voted for by committee and by readers of FIFA's
in-house magazine, who overwhelmingly voted for Pele. The award was, effectively, shared.
Maradona was furious. “The people voted for me,” he said, threatening not to attend
the ceremony. “Now they want me to share the prize with Pele. I'm not going to share
the prize with anybody.”
But attend he did.
At the star-studded awards bash in Rome, Maradona picked up his award first and dedicated it
to, amongst other people, his wife and his old friend Fidel Castro. And then he immediately
left the hall, leaving Pele to pick up the “Football Family” award by himself. “I
would have liked to have had Maradona up here on stage with me,” said Pele, Maradona's
front row seat now empty, “but it looks like he's already gone.”
FIFA's shenanigans still rankled Maradona. At a press conference in 2003 Maradona said
he was the true winner. “In 2000 I won the Player of the Century award thanks to the
people. Pele was second. He also came second behind [Ayrton] Senna as Brazil's greatest
sportsman. The award that FIFA gave Pele isn't worth shit.”
The bickering continued in the subsequent years, with periods of conflict and detente.
Maradona buried the hatchet by inviting Pele on to his new talk show “Night of the Ten”.
A few months later they were on stage together in Qatar. It was a bizarre event. Maradona
had only just recovered from a last-ditch stomach stapling operation in Cuba arranged
by Fidel Castro. Years of drug abuse and post-retirement inertia had seen Maradona become morbidly
obese, until the surgery drastically cut his weight. Pele, dressed in a baby blue, short
sleeve safari suit, had been polite and diplomatic with everyone he spoke to.
Maradona was combative, holding court about the game, his politics and the press. ‘The
media really only emphasised my drug addiction. All they wanted to do was publicise drugs,”
he said. “They wanted to kill Maradona and I make no apologies for my behaviour to the
press … To defend my family I will become Bin Laden. And if that’s what it takes I’ll
become the fiercest human being on the planet.”
But the two left the stage on what seemed like good terms.
But the bickering returned until a 2016 “Match for Peace” where the two again embraced
and vowed to bury their animosity between each other. “The most important thing is
the message of peace. Many thanks to my friend Maradona for this opportunity and a big round
of applause to the players who have been here today,” Pele said in a magnanimous tone.
“This is a moment of peace.”
Yet both returned to the topic. In 2017 Pele claimed Maradona couldn't be compared to him
because he couldn't head the ball or use his right foot. “We are friends,” said Pele.
“We are always joking. I always say to him: ‘Maradona, you can be level with Pele when
you have scored more than 1,000 goals.’ And he says: ‘I can’t now, but it doesn’t
matter!’”
The relative merits of Neymar versus Messi have become a new proxy battleground for the
pair, each supporting their countrymen. Earlier this year Pele again revisited the feud, placing
Ronaldo over Messi and omitting Maradona from his list of the world's greatest players entirely.
“I think Pele was better than them all,” Pele said in the first person.
The debate is far bigger than football. It's also about how we build heroes and why. Pele
had an exemplary career and was feted after it, appointed to various goodwill positions
at the UN and handed an honorary knighthood by the Queen.
But it was almost as if Pele was too good. As Alex Bellos wrote in his seminal 'Futbol:
The Brazilian Way of Life': “While Brazilians put Pele on a pedestal, they do not love him
the way they love Garrincha … It is because Pele does not reflect national desires. Pele,
above everything else, symbolises winning. Garrincha symbolise playing for playing sake.
Brazil is not a country of winners. It is a country of people who like to have fun.”
Maradona meanwhile was the dark to Pele's light. A genius, but corrupted and flawed.
As the famous Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano wrote of Maradona: “It was impossible to
live with the responsibility of being a God on the field, but from the beginning he knew
that stopping was out of the question. 'I need you to need me,' he confessed after many
years of living under the tyrannical halo of superhuman performance, swollen by cortisone
and analgesics and praise, harassed by the demands of his devotees and by the hatred
of those he offended.”
Maybe it’s because a flawed genius is someone who we can more easily empathise with. Maradona
is one of us: fallible. Or maybe it’s because his fallibility still leaves room for speculation.
Pele had become everything he could possibly have been. But for Maradona, the same question
still lingered, even after his myriad successes in the game. What could he still have become?