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Comment by quirino | Hacker News Reader

Few people in Brazil dare to suggest there has ever been an athlete greater than Pelé. I don't think we'll ever see anyone else win 3 World Cups.

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You can't compare different times, not trying to downplay what Pelé did, but there is surely more density now, so statistically harder to do the same

As Kasparov said about comparing players like Kobe to Jordan or Carlson to himself, it is difficult because they later players had the benefit of being able to study them earlier ones.

I don't know how to call this blend of virginiality and pioneering. Being both breaking barriers when there's a lot of barriers to break in a way.

Low-hanging fruit is the somewhat derogatory term.

yet no one else picked it... to me it's often derogatory to the environment.

let's poor one out for kobe here since his obituary was flagged off hn at the time.

Sure you can. Absolute quality of soccer players may have changed, but relative performance probably have not. That's what makes Pelé impressive: how good he was relative to his peers. No soccer player nowadays reach that same level.

>I don't think we'll ever see anyone else win 3 World Cups.

Mbappe a contender. Just needs to win 2 out of the next 3

Wow he was so close this WC

Getting to the final and winning the WC is very difficult, and will be even more so with 48 teams. France could've gone home earlier at many points, same as Argentina.

Even getting to PKs was partly luck. That handball penalty could've easily not happened or not been called.

While it's likely France will be a contender for the next decade or so, there's no guarantee of them making into to the final and winning. Plenty of stacked teams have gone home early before (even in this WC).

Do you have any estimation into the relative reverence/awe between Pelé and Ayrton Senna? Both seemed to be dominant in their sport and be fanatically loved by fans and the general public.

I dont think that Senna can compare to Pele.

This gives and idea of how great was Pele.

Soccer just has way more fans than auto racing, and astronomically more players from recreational to amateur to professional.

Senna is one of the very few people as universally beloved as Pelé here. Since his activity was much more recent he's closer to the heart of a lot of people.

I think Pele and Senna are incomparable.

But Senna captured more of the hearts of Brazilians, in my opinion.

Look at what happened when Senna died [1] and compare to the national reaction now that Pele has died.

Millions have lined up on the streets to say Senna a goodbye.

Of course the circumstance (Senna's crash) has an influence, but still...

To this day, Brazilians still have a hard time holding tears when they remember the day Senna's died.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j79qnfHODPk

That Senna died with an Austrian flag in his car is one of the greatest acts of sportsmanship left uncompleted. (He traditionally drove his victory lap with a Brazilian flag; Roland Ratzenberger, an Austrian, was killed in a crash earlier that same race weekend and Senna expected to win and honor him by displaying the Austrian flag on his victory lap.)

Senna's death was sudden and a tragedy. Pelé's death is also sad, but it was foreseeable given his health condition.

Mbappé came within PK’s of having two.

Mbappe will get at least 2 more. If Messi wasn't in the Argentina team this year he'd have got his second. He's 23.

Very bold prediction to use the word “will” without any qualification

Predictions like this have been made about numerous players and most have been wrong.

What wins a world cup is a team, not individuals.

This is exactly one of to reasons to guess that Mbappe will achieve this. Even if he, as individual, get injuried or worse at playing, France still has an incredibly strong young generation.

And France have easily one of the best teams, with lots of very talented youngsters waiting for a chance to prove themselves. Even with multiple injured highly important players that would have otherwise started (Pogba, Kanté, L. Hernandez, Benzema, Nkunku to an extent) they got to the final. For every player retiring (Benzema, probably Giroud and Lloris) there are younger players ready to step in, all the way down to the youth teams. And this is at every position, unlike most other teams like Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Spain that have obvious gaps in at least one position. The only other ones that come close in terms of all roundness of talent are England.

France will be a menace for at least the next decade.

while france does have a great squad, this sort of prediction goes against world cup history. Hardly ever the favorites win the world cup. In fact, imo the last time the favorites won the world cup was in 2002.

Think most Brazilians would disagree Brazil was favorite in 2002. It was a very messy campaign before getting to the world cup.

yes the campaign wasn't so good, and the copa before that was disastrous for brazil, but brazil were still the favorites. They had ronaldo, rivaldo, roberto carlos, cafu, kaka, ronaldinho, lucio, juninho in their line up. Granted Ronaldinho and Kaka were yet to hit their peak, but they were the team. If not for injuries and partying, even romario would have been there.

Stacked teams go home early all the time in WCs. France getting to the final again is an exception.

France went home early to Switzerland on penalties last year at the Euros (Mbappe missed a penalty!). That could happen again in 2026.

> What wins a world cup is a team, not individuals.

Also just luck. You can be in an "easy" play-off pool or a "difficult" one, you can have "easy" or "difficult" quarter finals, semi-finals, and finals.

Of course it still takes great skill and preparation from the entire team to win no matter what, and I don't want to take away from that, but the way the thing is set up means that in the end, "winning" doesn't mean nearly as much as it's made out to be.

It is impossible to predict but we can talk about the past: Messi is Argentinian and Maradona too. A goal like this will be difficult to see in the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wVho3I0NtU

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