IT was refreshing to see the mutual respect between Pele and Cristiano Ronaldo at the weekend when the Portuguese striker overtook the number of goals in official matches scored by the Brazilian.
All too often the debate about the respective merits of players from different eras turns into a generational war, with defenders of one player looking to play down the achievements of the other.
Fans are obviously free to come to their own conclusions on who might have been the greatest of all time.
But the giants are still the giants, whose achievements should be celebrated.
Defenders of Pele have probably done him a disservice over the years by putting so much emphasis on the number of goals that he scored – and Pele himself has done this, swatting away the idea that Lionel Messi has outdone him by saying that the debate could only start when the little Argentine had reached the 1000 mark.
It is not strong terrain on which to base a defence. The undoubted greatness of Pele does not lie in statistical accumulation, especially in friendlies and matches for the Brazilian military.
Pele was so extraordinarily good because he was a machine for playing football – in technical terms, dominating all of the fundamentals of the game, in physical terms, where his preparation was light years ahead of the competition, and also in psychological terms.
His temperament was a perfect mix of his parents – he had strong doses of the two great motivational forces, the pride in his profession from his father, the fear of failure and its consequences from his mother.
Almost invariably, he grew to the occasion, and, one of the true tests of greatness, he was almost invariably at his best when the stakes were highest.
This is the Pele which stands in the memory – the one of the decisive stages of the World Cups of 1958 and 70, the world club final against Benfica in 1962.
On the other hand, critics of Pele can get it wrong when they dismiss the value of the friendlies in Pele’s CV.
It was a different era of the game, when friendlies were not seen as meaningless encounters which merely cluttered up the calendar.
Some of the most important and remembered matches have been friendlies – think, for example, of Hungary’s crushing 6-3 win over England at Wembley in 1953.
This was a time before the game made money from TV rights. Revenue came from the box office.
Pele’s club, Santos, pulled out of the Copa Libertadores, South America’s Champions League, after 1965 for this very reason.
Back then the tournament was a financial drain. An expensive trip abroad was followed by just one game. Santos did their sums and came to an easy conclusion.
It made more sense to travel around playing friendlies. That way they could pack a number of games into a single trip and make the travel worthwhile.
These games were often taken very seriously. Pele and his magnificent supporting cast were a big draw.
A packed crowd came out to watch them – and the home side did not want to be humiliated in such circumstances. It would be wrong, then, to dismiss the goals Pele scored in these games as entirely without value.
Pele did not quite hit the heights in a World Cup of Diego Maradona in 1986.
He is not quite as influential as Alfredo Di Stefano, a giant on both sides of the Atlantic.
He did not have his achievements at the top level as well documented as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
There is no definitive way to prove who was the greatest.
But Pele has to be in the conversation – one which should always take place with respect between the generations.
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