Who was the greatest footballer of all time? And is that the same thing as the best footballer of all time? For most people the default answer is Pele. Even for those who never saw him play, except for a few inventive long shots, a header saved by Gordon Banks and that scene with the tactics board in Escape to Victory, he is the greatest footballer of all time. We trust what they all say; those who watched him know what they’re on about. He did score more than a thousand goals for his club, Santos. He did win World Cups in super stylish fashion, surrounded by a super stylish team, at the time when the TV age was bringing the World Cup to many more millions than ever before. I’m just saying. True, Pele never tested himself in the big European leagues, preferring to stay at Santos where the goal just opened up for him, but he also didn’t live in an age where the multi-million dollar transfer to Real Madrid was absolutely inevitable; unlike so many ‘new Peles’ after him, Santos were able to ‘match his ambitions’. He did live in the age where you went off to the United States for a bagload of cash though (yes Beckham, it has been done before), finishing off his career at New York Cosmos in the NASL, before helping the Allies (along with Sylvester Stallone and half the Ipswich team) defeat Nazi Germany. Can’t get greater than that.

However, I was a kid in the 1980s, so for me Maradona is king, hands down. It’s all subjective. Puskas might have been the best. Stanley Matthews even. If Rivelino, Gerson, Carlos Alberto et al had all been born Ulstermen, George Best may have lifted the Jules Rimet in 1970 in the green of Northern Ireland, and we’d probably all be saying he was the greatest of all time. I’m just saying.

I’m sketching World Cup greats in my football sketchbook in anticipation of the World Cup, which begins next week.