"When I saw Pele play, it made me feel I should hang up my boots." - Just Fontaine
"The greatest player in history was Di Stefano. I refuse to classify Pele as a player. He was above that." - Ferenc Puskas
"Pele is the greatest player of all time. He reigned supreme for 20 years. All the others – Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini – rank beneath him. There’s no one to compare with Pele." - Franz Beckenbauer
"In some countries they wanted to touch him, in some they wanted to kiss him. In others they even kissed the ground he walked on. I thought it was beautiful, just beautiful." - Clodoaldo
"His great secret was improvisation. Those things he did were in one moment. He had an extraordinary perception of the game." - Carlos Alberto
"Pele was the only footballer who surpassed the boundaries of logic." - Johan Cruyff
"An artist, in my eyes, is someone who can lighten up a dark room. I have never and will never find the difference between the pass from Pele to Carlos Alberto in the final of the World Cup in 1970 and the poetry of the young Rimbaud. There is in each of these human manifestations an expression of beauty which touches us and gives us a feeling of eternity." - Eric Cantona
"Muhammad Ali was waving to the crowd, blowing kisses, doing the Muhammad Ali thing. As soon as he walked into the locker room and saw Pele…he was like a star-struck child." - Shep Messing
"There’s Pele the man, and then Pele the player. And to play like Pele is to play like God." - Eusebio
"I’m a Pele fan from way back when I was a kid, and then there was always this thing later about Pele and Maradona. I was young and impressionable as a kid but it was always Pele for me." - Mr. Ferguson
"Malcolm Allison: “How do you spell Pele?” Pat Crerand: “Easy: G-O-D.”" - British commentary team at Mexico 1970
"Pele was the most complete player." - Bobby Moore
"I sometimes feel as though football was invented for this magical player." - Bobby Charlton
"Pele played football for 22 years, and in that time he did more to promote world friendship and fraternity than any other ambassador anywhere." - J.B. Pinheiro
"My name is Ronald Reagan, I’m the President of the United States of America. But you don’t need to introduce yourself, because everyone knows who Pele is." - Ronald Reagan
"Pele was one of the few who contradicted my theory: instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries." - Andy Warhol
"The difficulty, the extraordinary, is not to score 1,000 goals like Pele – it’s to score one goal like Pele." - Carlos Drummond de Andrade
"To watch him play was to watch the delight of a child combined with the extraordinary grace of a man in full." - Nelson Mandela
"The moment the ball arrived at Pele's feet, football transformed into poetry."- Pier Paolo Pasolini
"Absolutely everybody wanted to shake his hand, to get a photo with him. Saying you had partied with Pele was the biggest badge of honour going." - Mick Jagger
"I can be a new Di Stefano, but I can't be a new Pelé. He is the only one who goes beyond the limits of logic." - Johan Cruyff
"Pelé was the most complete player I've ever seen, he had everything. Two good feet. Magic in the air. Fast. Powerful. He could beat people with skill. He could outrun people. He was only 5ft 7in, yet he looked like a giant athlete on the field. Perfect balance and impossible vision. He was the biggest because he could do anything and everything on a football field. I remember Saldhana, the manager, being asked by a Brazilian journalist who was the best goalkeeper in his squad. He said Pele. In his opinion, the man could play any position. Sometimes I feel like football was invented for this magical player." - Bobby Moore
"There's Pelé, the man, and then Pelé, the player. And to play like Pelé is to play like God." - Michel Platini
"It's ugly to compare, but the greatest was Pelé. If we believe that God made man, God made Pelé perfect. Gave it all to him. Nothing was missing, heading, physical strength, dribbling, finishing, inspiration, genius, temperament, vision, goal. All." - Cesar Luis Menotti
"Pelé had the skin of a player, head, rhythm, everything. It was a panther dressed in white, I played with him. He came in to play at the last minute and managed to turn the game around. And the big difference is that Pelé created fear on the field, Maradona didn't... For me it's Pelé, Alfredo Di Stefano and Maradona, in that order. Thanks to Diego, he's a great player. But Pelé was from another planet." - Hugo Gatti
"I said to myself before the game, 'he's made of skin and bones like everyone else'. But I was wrong." - Tarcisio Burgnich
"Pelé was the greatest - just perfect. And off the field he was always smiling and excited. You never see him moody. He loves being Pele." - Tostão
"I arrived with the hope of stopping a great man, but I left convinced that we just had been destroyed by someone who was not born on the same planet as the rest of us." - Costas Pereira
