Issue No. 51 June 2014

CAIRO WEST MAGAZINE
FEATURE
Greatest Soccer Players Of All Time
By Ahmed Salah
Pele (1956-1977)
the Century’s Greatest Footballer
along with Diego Maradona, Pele has
continued to be an inspiration to the
“the beautiful game.”
Diego Maradona (1976-1997)
Johan Cruyff (1964-1984)
Pele was born in October 1940 as
Edson Arantes do Nascimento to
Dondinho and Dona Celeste Arantes,
his friends started calling him Pele
after his favourite football player
Vasco da Gama ‘Bile’, whom he
mispronounced as ‘Pele’. Pele’s father
was also a soccer player.
Throughout his illustrious career
both on and off the pitch, Pele has
remained a true ambassador of the
game. Making his club debut for
Santos at the age of 15 in 1956, he
remained with the club until 1974.
Although facts and figures could
never do justice to the majesty
that was Pele, his 1,281 goals in all
competitions certainly serve to prove
the point. He helped lead Santos
to nine State Championships, and
claimed two consecutive World Club
Championships in 1962 and 1963.
There is no player who can claim
greater success on the world stage.
Pele made his international debut at
the tender age of 16. A year later and
his teammates pressured the national
coaching staff to include the 17-yearold
in the 1958 World Cup squad. Kept
out of the majority of the tournament
due to injury, Pele came on in Brazil’s
pool match against the Soviet Union.
In the quarterfinals, Pele scored the
winner against Wales, a hat trick in
the semi-finals against France, and
two in the final against Sweden.
Brazil won the 1958 World Cup, and
a star was born. Out with injury for
the 1962 World Cup, Pele returned to
the national squad and claimed one
more World Cup title in 1970. Voted
42 41
Diego Armando Maradona Born in
1960 in a shack so rickety that when
it rained it was wetter inside than
out, raised in one room with seven
siblings, Maradona became the only
man to win a World Cup virtually by
himself. More than that: his skill and
personality dominated a generation
of World Cups.
His first World Cup came in 1982, but
ended in disgrace when he was sent
off for kicking the Brazilian Batista in
the testicles. Mexico in 1986 was to
be his zenith.
His ‘Hand of God’ goal against
England at the 1986 World Cup and
the stunning solo effort that followed
sum up this flawed genius better than
any words. Maradona did not always
play by the rules, and confesses that
his expulsion from the 1994 World Cup
after testing positive for ephedrine is
one of his saddest memories. But the
Maradona that captained Argentina
to the 1986 World Cup and helped
unfashionable Napoli to Serie A titles
in 1987 and 1990 was irrepressible.
Johan Cruyff (also known as Johan
Cruijff), was born in Amsterdam in
1947 a few hundred meters from
the Ajax stadium. He began hanging
around the club as a toddler. His
father, Manus, a grocer, supplied Ajax
with fruit, and after Manus died when
Cruyff was twelve, Cruyff’s mother
cleaned Ajax’s locker rooms.
The skinny waif debuted for the
first team at 17. Ajax was then
a semi-professional club, barely
known outside the Netherlands, but
within a few years Cruyff and Ajax’s
manager Rinus Michels turned it
into the world’s best team. The duo
invented a new kind of soccer, which
foreigners called “Total football.”
Players swapped positions at great
speed, creating an unprecedented
fluidity of play. In the midst of it was
Cruyff, constantly changing position,
pointing and shouting directions at
others even while he dribbled past
opponents.
Ajax won three straight European
Cups from 1971 through 1973, and
each time Cruyff was voted European
Player of the Year. But he was an
opinionated and difficult man, and
quarrels punctuated his career. In
1973, after his teammates voted him
out of Ajax’s captaincy, he fled to
Barcelona. The club swiftly won its
first Spanish title in fourteen years.
Cruyff is best remembered as the
guide of Holland’s great team at the
World Cup of 1974, though sadly the