Looking at domestic leagues at the time there are certain things we can ascertain
1. There was certainly higher goalscoring games. And not from the top teams beating lower teams but across the board.
From this we can deduce one of four things
a) the forward play was better
b) the defending was poorer
c) tactics at the time were not as sophisticated
c) a bit of everything
2. In England during the period of the debate between Fortitude and Brad (1950's and 1960's) 11 different teams won the league title with United winning it 5 times. I cannot gauge from internet research what teams were the most successful in Brazil during the same period.
3. Of England's 1966 World Cup team (the debate talked about World Cup Teams)....England had Banks (Leicester/Stoke), Cohen (Fulham), Wilson (Huddersfield), Ball (Blackpool), Hurst, Peters, Moore (West Ham) all from non title winning teams (7 out of 11).......
By this we can deduce that the standard of other players in non-title winning teams was still very high, in fact only Leeds (Charlton), Man Utd (Stiles, Charlton) and Liverpool (Hunt) were title winning clubs that supplied players in that winning team.
Once again without data it is hard to make any assessment and comparisons to the Brazilian teams.
So I wasn't there watching week in and week out.......but I can make an argument based on facts. And I can read extensively about football during that period.
It is fair to say that the teams in England during this period were fairly evenly matched. Thus any one player standing out must have been a very good player. Jimmy Greaves goal scoring record in the 1950's and 1960's is very good because he wasn't scoring against crap teams every week. He was scoring against title winning sides.
The question is.......does anyone actually know (by research or otherwise) the following:
1. Who won the Brazilian leagues in those years
2. Which players in the National Team represented which clubs?
3. Who scored all the goals?
There are probably other reference points but until we can look at the data the rest is pure speculation.
I don't know how good the Brazilian State League was back in 1958.....did Botafogo run away with it? That might explain why they had so many players in the 1958 squad.
Interesting debate
Thanks Fortitude and Brad!
Welcome Mujac. As you rightly say, you can make arguements based on recorded facts, and by watching programs / documentaries / footage of the era
To try and help you out - for a start Botafogo, who you rightly say had some of the best Brazilian players of the era - Garrincha, Didi, Zagallo, Nilton Santos etc, weren't in the same state championship as Pele, they played in the Campeonato Carioca (Rio state championship), and won it 5 times between the 50's and 60's. Other top sides who won the Rio championship at the time were Vasco (4 times), Botafogo (5 times) and Flamengo (5 times)
Looking at Brazil national squads -
link here - you can identify the breakdown of players from the national team who played in the State Championships:
1958: 7 representative (2 Santos) from active finals playing squad of 16
1962: 6 (4 Santos) from 12
1970: 6 (3 Santos) from 16
Certainly players from Rio and Sao Paulo state were the dominant make up of those squads, though the non Santos representation wasn't so high (bar '58, although of the 6 players to play every game in the tournament, only 1 came from Sao Paulo state football - Gilmar).
Sadly as far as finding out the scoring ratio's of other domestic football players of the time, it seems a bit of a closed shop! I'm yet to find the resource that allows me to do so
For me, it's pretty clear top players from Brazil weren't competing against each other in regular domestic competition, and thus the goal scoring achievment of Pele in domestic football has to recognise this. Of course, we all judge Pele off the performances he gave on the world stage, and rightly so. He produced at the top level, he was the best of that era (other Brazilians might argue for Garrincha). But I often hear people cite his insane goal records, and personally I think they are slightly misleading, because as I've explained, the great majority came in domestic competition weakened by the way it was organised; and in exhibition and friendly games