Jamie Carragher Shares His Theory About Pele's Goal Record, Says He Is A 'Myth'

Jamie Carragher has played down the suggestion that Brazil's all-time leading goalscorer Pele scored 1,000 goals during his career, labelling the achievement as a "bit of a myth."

Pele's goal record continues to cause debate; so how many did he really score? Well, the legendary forward netted 643 "official" goals for Santos, with his overall career tally standing at 767, according to FIFA.

But back in December 2020, Santos claimed that Pele scored 1,091 goals - not the reported 643 goals - for the Brazilian club after Lionel Messi became the highest goalscorer for a single club when he scored for Barcelona against Real Valladolid.

In doing so, seven-time Ballon d'Or winner Messi broke a long standing record that had previously belonged to Pele since 1974, although Santos strongly denied that achievement.

In fact, they released a lengthy statement to suggest Pele's additional goals in 'official games' against the likes of Real Madrid and Juventus should be counted.

It's fair to say Pele's record divides opinion and during last night's episode of Monday Night Football, former Liverpool centre-back Jamie Carragher brought his views into the discussion.

You can watch that moment below.

There is no doubting Pele's iconic status in world football but the uncertainty surrounding the amount of goals he scored in his career often crops up.

For example, back in January last year, Cristiano Ronaldo notched his 758th goal when he scored for Juventus against Udinese, climbing ahead of Pele in the 'official' all-time goalscoring charts.

But shortly after overtaking him, eagle-eyed fans spotted that the former Santos striker had updated his Instagram to claim that he is football's all-time record scorer.

The three-time World Cup winner's bio suggested that he scored 1,283 goals - a dramatic increase on the goal haul linked to his name.

Carragher, meanwhile, has previously placed Lionel Messi above the likes of Pele when it comes to the 'greatest of all time' discussion.

“People always throw Pele and Maradona into the best-ever argument, but I think what Messi has done year-in and year-out in the Champions League trumps that,” he said in the book Messi – The King of Camp Nou.

“Unfortunately, people will always say things like ‘he never did this, won that.’ It’s the same for Liverpool in some seasons. Whatever we achieved, we got opposition fans saying ‘well, you didn’t win the league.’

“The reality is that it can be to do with the manager at the time, the squad of players, the opposition, whatever… Messi could even legitimately argue that he wasn’t even playing in the best international team in the world.

“They did well getting to a final, in which he was player of the tournament. What more can he do?!”