Brazilian legend Pele has named Barcelona and Argentina forward Lionel Messi as his best player of all time. This is ahead of the Argentine fellow country man Diego Maradona who is sometime painted as the best all time best. Pele made this declaration while also admitting that Brazil’s World Cup defeat to Germany two years ago brought his to tears. Pele was in Milan to promote a movie about his life and he spoke to Italian La Gazzetta della Sport about his favorite players at every point with the Barcelona Lionel Messi topping the list.
The legend is quoted as saying that; “It’s very difficult because there have always been players who have been compared with me [as the best player ever].First there was [Alfredo] Di Stefano, then [Johan] Cruyff, [Franz] Beckenbauer, Bobby Charlton, Maradona and now there is Messi. Leo is the one I like the most — he’s the most complete. Messi is my favourite player, but Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar are also good. They have different styles in a football which has changed.” Pele also mentioned that calling Italian legend Francesco Totti the Italian Pele was correct.
The 75 years old said watching his country beaten by Germany in the World Cup was humiliating, also stating that his son would have seen him cry that day. It is OK to lose but to concede seven goals in the World Cup at that stage is nothing less than humiliating. He said football is a hard game and predicting who would win is a difficult thing. Ahead of Saturday’s Champions League final Pele said he would prefer Madrid wins it ahead of Atletico because of their style of play also adding that the game of football is diminishing because winning is now more important than the beauty of the game.