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Pelé
Pelé signed with Santos FC in Brazil at 15 and made his senior international debut for the Brazilian national team at 16, then became the youngest player ever to win a World Cup when Brazil claimed the 1958 tournament in Sweden — he was 17, and scored twice in the final against the host nation. He went on to win two more World Cups with Brazil, in 1962 (though injuries limited his playing time) and 1970, making him the only player in history to win three World Cup titles. The 1970 Brazil squad, built around a 29-year-old Pelé at his peak, is still widely cited as one of the greatest international teams ever assembled. Pelé's career goal totals depend heavily on how friendlies and exhibition matches are counted, but by Santos's own count he scored 1,279 goals in 1,363 career appearances, a figure that includes non-competitive matches and is often cited, with that caveat, as the clearest evidence of the rawest goal-scoring career the sport has produced. His 643 goals for Santos in official competitive matches alone still rank among the highest total for any player at a single club. Pelé retired from Santos in 1974, then played two more seasons for the New York Cosmos in the North American Soccer League, a move widely credited with meaningfully raising soccer's profile in the United States during the 1970s. FIFA named him Joint Player of the Century in 2000, an honor shared, somewhat controversially, with Diego Maradona.
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Diego Maradona
Diego Maradona made his professional debut for Argentinos Juniors at 15 and went on to play for Boca Juniors and Barcelona before his most famous stretch, seven seasons at Napoli, where he transformed a mid-table Italian club into two-time Serie A champions (1987 and 1990) — titles Napoli had never won before his arrival and wouldn't win again for more than three decades. His defining moment came at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, where he almost single-handedly carried Argentina to the title, scoring five goals and providing five assists across the tournament. The quarterfinal against England produced two of the most famous goals in World Cup history within four minutes of each other: the illegally handled "Hand of God" goal, and the "Goal of the Century," a 60-yard solo run past five England defenders. Maradona was named joint FIFA Player of the Century alongside Pelé in 2000, an award split between the two players after a disputed voting process — a fittingly contested honor for a career that combined genuinely transcendent skill with real off-field controversy, including a 15-month ban from the sport in 1991 after a positive cocaine test. Maradona's Napoli years are still commemorated in the city today — a mural of him remains a fixture of the Spanish Quarter, and the club's stadium was renamed Stadio Diego Armando Maradona after his death in 2020, a level of civic attachment that mirrors how completely his legacy is tied to a club he turned into a champion almost single-handedly.
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