Between them, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have achieved a number of incredible goalscoring records and it might not be too long before one of them, possibly both, have eclipsed Pele in terms of their numbers at club level.
As we know, the three-time World Cup winner counts every goal he ever scored, irrespective of whether it was in the Brazilian top fight, a five-a-side game, or on the beach. But as per the Express, his official record for Santos, where he played for 18 years, was 619 goals in 638 games.
There was a time where no-one would come close to that record but that was until Messi and Ronaldo ran riot over European football.
Messi became the first player to score 400 goals in La Liga a week ago and he boasts a silly tally of 576 goals in 660 games for Barcelona.
Even at 31, he’s still tearing it up with 24 goals in all competitions so far this season. He needs just 46 goals to better Pele’s club record – which would appear to be a pretty straightforward task for someone with Messi’s godly talents.
Ronaldo finished on a modest 450 goals for Real Madrid and has been his usual consistent self over in Italy, with 16 Serie A goals for Juventus. A further 31 club goals to take him past Pele should be light work.
Last month, Pele came up with some quite incredible criticism of Messi, claiming that the Argentine cannot use his weaker foot, cannot head the ball and only has one trick to his game.
“How can you make a comparison between a guy who heads the ball well, shoots with the left, shoots with the right and another who only shoots with one leg, only has one skill and doesn’t head the ball well?” the former Santos forward told Folha de Sao Paulo, via The Mirror.
“How can you compare? To compare with Pele, it has to be someone who shoots well with the left, shoots well with the right, and scores headers.”
sportbible.com
