Attribute it to the incessant need to create “something”; but the all-time record (found in quotation marks for a reason) for the most goals in a career, which Cristiano Ronaldo is pursuing or has already surpassed (the Portuguese scored his 760th goal on January 21; he beat Josef Bican’s goal 759, or still keeping him behind Bican’s 805 goal, as measured), it’s just not, let’s say … “anything”.
We’re not talking about when Hank Aaron chased the Babe Ruth record, only to be chased a generation later by Barry Bonds; or watch LeBron James get closer to Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when this happens. It’s a trick. Football doesn’t work that way by nature: it is a broad, messy and poorly organized sport. Moreover, football has less significance for history. (Even the most casual of baseball fans probably know who Bonds and Mark McGwire are; besides, they know who the men were whose records were broken by the former: Aaron and Roger Maris. Are casual fans of English football so familiar with their equivalents, namely Dixie Dean. and Jimmy Greaves?)
So why is the goal record ever really flawed? I’ll tell you why.
This figure is primarily based on the sum of the converted goals scored in matches played with national teams and clubs in the same race; something that, to be fair, no one did until recently. Had he done this from the start, the previous record-holder footballer would be a well-known figure, even though he was only mentioned as a legendary and unattainable man who set trends; as is the case with Cy Young, with his 511 wins in the baseball world, or Don Bradman with his 99.94 test average in cricket. But that is not the case. Ask around. Survey your friends. If someone tells you that Josef “Pepi” Bican was the top scorer in football history until last month, it’s probably one of three options: Czech, football historian, or a liar.
Plus, we have the fact that the whole premise behind the record is flawed from the starting point. It takes into account the “official” matches (ie league and cup competitions) at club level, although it also adds the friendly matches at international level. We are talking about adding apples to oranges. Why in one case and not in the other? Are we sure that one of those international friendlies at the end of the season against Latvia, on a rainy Tuesday, with a maximum of 10 substitutions per team, has the same weight as a competitive match with a club?
The other important issue is that in order to make records meaningful, we need reliable data that can be accurately compared, and simply put, we don’t have it. Due to the nature of this sport. There is no centralized authority to keep historical records, and professional sport evolved within its signature messy style for years, until it managed to achieve some semblance of order in the 1970s. And that’s without taking into account the minor issues, such as wars, political disputes, and nationalism, that have stood in the way of sport.
Let’s take a look at the statistics for Bican, whose total lifespan scorers are as follows:
– 703, if we only take into account goals scored in the first division and international matches; or
– 703, if we only take into account goals scored in the first division and international matches; or
– 800, if we add only goals scored with first teams and international commitments; or
– 805, if we pay attention to sites devoted to the history of football, such as rsssf.com, although their managers have admitted that they are missing some data (meaning that Bican could have scored higher); or
– 805, if we pay attention to sites devoted to the history of football, such as rsssf.com, although their managers have admitted that they are missing some data (meaning that Bican could have scored higher); or
– 5,000, if we believe Bican himself, he was probably joking.
So how many goals has he actually scored? We’re not going to force Cristiano to play with over 80 years of age, adding 5,000 points, right? (While that has been said, it probably is.)
Also, don’t look to FIFA to help us with this dilemma. Their representatives will reply that they only keep records in tournaments organized by said institution: World Cup and similar events. Rightly so. Why raise the wasp’s nest?
(Beware, we do not intend to belittle Bican. The Czech was one of the greatest footballers of his time, a figure in the Austrian national team’s “wunderteam” in the 1930s, just before the start of the war. left the Nazis and chose to play for his ancestors’ land instead of his homeland; he spent much of his career in what was then Czechoslovakia).
Bican is not the only player who is difficult to compare objectively. Pelé, synonymous with scoring ability, is in a similar situation. Brazil did not have a national league until 1971, when “O Rei” was 30 years old. Until then, he played most of his league matches in the Santos jersey at the Paulista Championship, the Sao Paulo regional circuit. Sao Paulo was probably the best football region in the country; However, Pelé did not regularly play for some of the most important clubs in the country (such as Flamengo, Botafogo, Gremio or Flamengo).
However, this doesn’t mean that Pelé hasn’t met top-notch rivals. Apart from the powers of the state of Sao Paulo such as Palmeiras, Corinthians and Sao Paulo, it played Copa Libertadores (South American equivalent of the European Cup), the Taça Brasil (national cup in which the different regional champions compete) and of course several prestigious friendly matches. If you download a spreadsheet with all of Pelé’s goals, you’ll find that the Brazilian went on a world tour in most summers (for example, Santos traveled to Europe in the summer of 1963 and played nine games in four weeks), as he was also part of from several regional star teams and even played in his country’s Coast Guard early in his career.
All tours and all-star teams are not added to the “official” account (no matter what that means); However, as people say in Brazil, Pelé wanted to compete with the best in the world and this was his way of doing it (by the way, that’s how we hit his famous 1,283 goals).
All of the above should be enough to convince you of the absurdity of these record scoring comparisons; although we could go further. We can say that Bican scored many of his goals during World War II, at the same time that many top players were serving in the military and many others were suffering from malnutrition. Or that for political reasons, Pelé was never allowed to move to Europe and compete at that level.
It’s not their fault that they played in a different era, when the world was different and apart from that, war and political disputes disrupted their competitive environment. All of the above does not detract from the merits of Bican and Pelé, who in their own way rank among the greatest of all time. It’s just a matter of understanding that we can’t use historical goal scoring records to measure a footballer’s greatness. Makes no sense.
Man, I’m moving on. While there are valid arguments to say that Cristiano and Lionel Messi (who is younger than the first and whose stats could be on a similar level) may be the object of comparisons for being contemporaries, the idea still seems silly. Admittedly, both score goals in industrial amounts, despite not being born center-forward. However, are Messi and CR7 the best benchmarks? In the past 20 years, no player in Europe’s four major leagues has scored more than 40 goals in league matches. Messi and Cristiano have achieved it, three times each. Together they have scored a minimum of 30 league goals in 16 seasons, more than the sum of the rest of the forwards who have played in Europe over the past two decades. And only two, except Messi and Cristiano, have made it more than once.
If you need goal totals to confirm your greatness, try it, just to prove it. But it really isn’t necessary, is it?
Leave historical score totals to other sports. Football is much bigger than statistics. Not to mention that making comparisons between the different eras is a much more complicated exercise.