Guys, you're overthinking this:
Pelé - 4 times in the WC, 3 wins.
Maradona - 4 times, 1 win.
Messi - 5 times, 1 win.
C.Ronaldo - 5 times, 0 win.
Easy. We can count the goals and assists per game too if you want.
Lots of factors come into this. Pele's Brazil was stacked with great players at a time when the European countries were emerging from hell. Non of the other players played in teams anywhere near as good. Brazil won the WC in 1962 without Pele in all but one game.
Having a good manager is also important. The one time Argentina had a really good team (not as good as Pelés Brazil), they had Maradona as manager.
In addition, in mordern football, by the time the wc arrives (2022 an exception), the players have already played atleast 50 games and are burnt out whereas back in the day they played much fewer games so they were relatively fresh and able to perform on the big stage. It therefore wasn't surprising that Qatar 2022 is one of the best tournaments ever.
Add to that the tactical evolution of the game. In today's game, everyone has seen Messi/Cristiano etc play week in/ week out. Every minute detail is analysed and worked on. They know their strengths and weaknesses. Teams are drilled to be able to stop them. On the other hand, most people saw Pele only at the world cup or in friendlies so it was probably more difficult to plan tactically on how to stop him or the Brazilian national teach. This applies to Maradona although to a lesser extent. TV coverage was not as wide.
On the flip side, the ball was heavy, the pitches very imperfect.
For me, not having watched Pele, i'd say Messi is the best I have ever seen.
@mshnsh
I think you can easily
find dozens of matches where Messi loses the ball often. How often has he failed to deliver in the CL in his last couple of years? You can also highlight numerous world cup games where Messi simply comes out short.
Does this make Messi a lesser player? No because we know his peak which he also showed numerous times. These Pele examples don’t prove a lot, I’m fairly certain there are games to be found where he hit near perfection as well.
Bad games can happen to anyone.
It's quite clear that you never actually watched Pele and are assuming based on hearsay. What I am trying to highlight is that while Pele was the best of his era, the way people try to speak about him as being some sort of superman is not true. They have created a myth and these matches show that it wasn't always perfect even at the word cup.