A tribute to Pele: The 'King of Football' and a pioneer of greatness

To achieve that nickname universally in the biggest, most popular sport on the planet speaks louder than any other tribute could.

Certain clubs have their own kings - Kenny Dalglish at Liverpool, Denis Law and Eric Cantona at Manchester United, for example - but for football as a whole, Pele was pretty much the first and undisputed monarch.

The first global footballing superstar, Pele's name has since been joined by the majestic Argentine duo of Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi in the eternal debate of the greatest of all time.

Both are well worthy of their place alongside the king, and many would have at least one of them above Pele, but Pele was the original GOAT and for many will remain as such.

Pele was a pioneer; Erling Braut Haaland's tribute to the Brazilian legend following his death of Thursday pointed out that "everything you see any player doing, Pele did it first", and there are compilation videos available to prove that too.

Pele was doing Cruyff turns long before the Dutch maestro had the move named after him, he was soaring past multiple defenders and scoring wondergoals years before Maradona began to do the same, he had been pirouetting on the ball and lifting it over defenders' heads for more than a decade before Zinedine Zidane was even born.

Perhaps one of the most underrated aspects of Pele's skillset was his incredible dribbling ability, probably due to him playing in the same team as Garrincha and most often being compared with Maradona and Messi - perhaps the three greatest dribblers of all time.

Pele was world class with either foot - something neither Maradona or Messi can claim to the same extent - and for a man of 5ft 8in he was also magnificent in the air, another thing he has over the Argentine duo.

Perhaps more than any other player in football history, Pele was capable of scoring any type of goal at any time, be that beating multiple defenders and then the keeper, tapping home from close range, lashing a shot in from long range, rising above the defence to plant a powerful header into the bottom corner, drilling in a free kick or producing an acrobatic bicycle kick which he effectively trademarked - Pele could do it all, and often better than anyone else.

Indeed, he is said to have often turned down penalties as he felt they were a 'cowardly' way to score - although his 1,000th goal did come from the spot.

To use another music analogy, Pele was Elvis and The Beatles - megastars who burst out of their field and truly changed the world, doing things which had never been done before and achieving things that had never been achieved before or - in many cases - since.

The difference is that today, people can still access the vast majority of Elvis' and The Beatles' greatest work, whereas in Pele's case some of the best moments were not filmed and therefore live on only in the memory of those who were there.

Indeed, it is widely accepted that perhaps Pele's greatest ever goal was never recorded; computer-generated images have instead been created to try to bring it to life from the descriptions of those who witnessed it, showing him lift the ball over the head of not one, not two, but three defenders in succession before nodding home.

Plenty of video footage does exist to show the true greatness of the Brazilian icon, yet it stands to reason that those do not cover even half of the evidence behind Pele's GOAT claim, with countless more moments lost to unfilmed history.

In an era where every Messi movement and moment can be replayed and viewed time after time, there does remain a threat that the genius of Pele could fade in coming generations simply due to a comparative lack of footage.

However, the testimonies of those who played with and against him will live on through the generations, with fellow greats such as Alfredo Di Stefano, Johan Cruyff, Bobby Moore, Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Geoff Hurst, Franz Beckenbauer, Ferenc Puskas, Michel Platini and Carlos Alberto among the footballing legends to cite Pele as the best of them all.

The closest to a Lionel Messi-Cristiano Ronaldo debate in Pele's time was Pele or Eusebio, an argument which the Brazilian put to rest when his Santos side met Eusebio's Benfica and Pele scored five times over the two legs, including a hat-trick in Lisbon.

Such occasions for Pele to compete against the best Europe had to offer were comparatively rare, although they did occur as Santos sought to take full advantage of his worldwide star power with money-spinning glamour friendlies around the world.

The figure of 1,279 goals in 1,363 games is sometimes discredited or treated with derision due to the inclusion of friendly games, but often those were the only opportunities to test himself against the best of the rest in the world at club level, and many were anything but non-competitive games.

Any suggestion that not playing in Europe harms his claim to the throne would also be viewing things through the eyes of today's game; at the time, Brazil were comfortably the best team in the world and the best Brazilian players played in Brazil.

There was often talk of Pele leaving for a European team, with Manchester United among those interested, but such was his value to the country that the Brazilian government declared him a national treasure, effectively blocking him from leaving Santos.

Another indication of his global stardom came in 1969 when Santos visited a war-torn Nigeria, where the legend claims that the two sides in the civil war declared a 48-hour ceasefire so that they could both watch Pele play. The Brazilian scored both goals and received a standing ovation.

What makes such stories all the more remarkable is that other countries only got rare glimpses of Pele, often only every four years at World Cups.

Santos' globetrotting tours, along with word of mouth, helped Pele's legend spread around the world, but there is no telling how many jaw-dropping moments Pele produced which were missed by the vast majority of the planet.

Regardless of ability on the field, no other player in football history has had quite such an impact.

The scarcity of opportunities to watch Pele are perhaps the biggest reason why his World Cup exploits are so seared into the mind of even younger football fans.

A senior club player at 15, senior international at 16 and World Cup winner at 17, Pele's 1958 heroics - when he scored a hat-trick in the semi-final and brace in the final to help Brazil to their first World Cup title - saw him burst onto the scene like no-one else before or since.

Four years later he was injured in the second game and watched on as Brazil retained their title, before the crowning glory of 1970, when he led the best international side of all time to an unprecedented third World Cup title.

Those images, beamed around the world in glorious technicolour, remain some of the most iconic in World Cup history and cemented his legacy as the greatest of all time up to that point.

Whether or not you feel that Maradona or Messi have since surpassed him, there is no doubting that Pele would be the first face on football's Mount Rushmore - the original GOAT, perhaps the most important player of all time and a global icon who transcended football and sport.