Many people reading this need no introduction to Messi his exploits list of speak for itself. Pele on the other hand many know only by reputation and likely no one reading this would have witnessed him play live so to speak.Unfortunately TV clips from that era of him are scarce and of low quality ,lacking the multiple angles that the modern game has.
So how good was he really,he was good no doubt but is spoken of in such hallowed tones that it is almost blasphemous to compare him with ANYONE. Many argue that he played a long time ago against weaker opposition and the modern game is much tougher. I disagree that he played against weaker opposition. In that era many players had their career ended by vicious tackles and unsympathetic refereeing.Another factor many overlook is the back pass rule.It is very important and makes the striker's life easier. In those days a defender could pass to the keeper and he could pick up the ball no problem. Also there was no red card for a foul denying a goal scoring opportunity and indeed even yellow cards were rare.It was a "man's game" literally in those days and they were very hard. There was no six second rule for goal . If a player was offside he was offside nothing like "not involved or interfering with play" . All these rules I believe make attacking easier and were designed to do just that though whether they have that impact overall is debatable.
There are many still old enough to have seen Pele ,Maradona ,George Best and now Messi play e.g Alex Ferguson,Bobby Charlton etc. Another great from that era whom I must not forget is Eusebio. There seems to be a consensus that the top players from that are as good as the Best of today and that arguably there were many more top players simply because of how vicious the defending was with little protection from referees.
What is strikin is Pele is credited with over 1000 goals in hi career which is trulyy staggering even if he was playn against women's teams.

I found a collection of his goals online ; 20 goals and whilst the video quality is not great his genius still shines true. Happy viewing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHG-e9XF8yo
Who is your man Pele or Messi?