Santos deny that Messi has broken Pele's record!

BeSoccer 3 years ago 7.1k |

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Santos claim that Pele scored over 1000 goals for them. EFE

A statement on Santos' official website criticises the fact that only goals scored in official tournaments count towards the number of goals scored. They say that Pele has actually scored 1091 goals for Santos if you include all of the matches.

Santos do not agree that Messi has broken Pele's record for most number of goals scored by a player for a single club. At least Santos' investigators and historians association do not agree with it.

This group, under the signature of Fernando Ribeiro, issued a statement on the club's official website in which they deny that the Brazilian star only scored 643 goals for Santos.

The association criticises the fact that 448 goals Pele scored for Santos have been ignored. They say that he has netted a total of 1091 goals so people should not talk about Messi beating Pele's record.

"The 448 goals which they are trying to omit today were scored against the main clubs from those seasons. Pele scored nine goals against each of Club America (Mexico) and Colo Colo (Chile), He also put eight past Inter Milan, one of the main European clubs in the 1960. The list is immense and with big clubs: River Plate, Boca Juniors, Racing, Universidad de Chile, Real Madrid, Juventus, Lazio, Napoli, Benfica and Anderlecht. Barcelona themselves, where Messi plays, were also one of Pele's victims: four goals, scored in four games," part of the statement reads.

The aforementioned association believes that whether a match is official or not is irrelevant: "The argument of some analysts is that many of these 448 goals scored in friendly matches were against weak opponents, like small teams or regional teams. Even so, the matches were played in official uniform with the official laws of the game and officially logged."

"We must remember that clubs could only play friendlies with the approval of the regional and national federations. That is one of the rules imposed by FIFA, the organiser of world football. Taking into account subjective attributes, like the strength of opponents, is not ideal for compiling statistical data. The numbers are absolute. A goal against Eibar is statistically the same as one scored versus Valencia. A goal against Transvaal (of Surinam) is worth the same as one scored against Real Madrid, in the middle of the Santiago Bernabeu," the statement argued.

Pele has already congratulated the Argentine on his 644 goals for Barcelona and he has not yet commented on this version which Santos defend.