Chesterlestreet
Man of the crowd
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2012
- Messages
- 19,823
There was national play-offs from 1959, which numbers I put in that bracket, together with C libertadores and Club WC. 89 of those 173 matches on the top tier on domestic level were played before he turned 30 (1959-70). The play-offs were between 5 and 17 games each season before the League were formed.
The point was that he scored most of his goals against cannon fodder in the Paulista and produced more human numbers when he met better teams more regularly. Santos saw double digits in the Paulista every other year and had multible 7+ wins every season. The Paulista cannot be compared to the best leagues in the world today, even though two-three of the best teams in the world at the time played there. It's like having a 16-20 team League with only teams from the London region.
I pointed it out (in that way) because a casual reader might get the impression there was a national ("top tier") league in Brazil (in which Pelé played, in addition to playing in a regional one) before 1970.