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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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Franz Beckenbauer
Franz Beckenbauer spent the bulk of his club career with Bayern Munich, where he essentially invented the modern "libero," or sweeper, role — a defender who not only cleaned up behind the back line but also pushed forward to start attacks, a level of positional freedom for a defensive player that hadn't really been seen before him. Nicknamed "Der Kaiser," Beckenbauer won the 1974 World Cup as captain of West Germany, then became the first person to win the World Cup as both a player and a head coach when he led West Germany to the 1990 title as manager — an achievement matched by only one other person in soccer history. He won two Ballon d'Or awards (1972, 1976) and led Bayern Munich to three consecutive European Cup titles (1974, 1975, 1976), plus four Bundesliga titles, anchoring the club's rise into one of Europe's dominant sides during the 1970s. Beckenbauer later became a prominent soccer administrator, serving as president of the organizing committee for the 2006 World Cup hosted in Germany, extending his influence on the sport well past his playing and coaching careers — a rare case of someone shaping the game at an elite level from three completely different chairs: the field, the touchline, and the boardroom.
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