Hand of God and God himself

A few words.

Calculations were done as explained here. In short, goals, wins, draws,shutouts on the positive side; games lost without scoring a goal on negative. All that divided by number of games played.

Only regular national championship matches, no all star games, no cup games, no national squad games, no Puerto Rico 12:0 blowouts.. Only meaningful games played with balanced competition.

Pele's statistics are perfect. Every game, every goal, every squad. So, calculations for his career are as good as they can get. Spreadsheet can be found here. Though, keep in mind that soccer was a different game then. Substitutions were rare if even allowed, games were played all year round, Brazil didn't have unified league, so results are from the state of Sao Paolo league (Campeonato Paulista )...

Maradona's statistics are accurate for his Spain and Italian career, not so much for Argentinian part. But when in doubt, err on the side of the player. If I was biased in my approximations, I was biased in favor of Diego. Future exact calculations for the Argentinian part of his career ( when data will be available ) will not stray much from these. He was what he was. A wasted talent. So great, but so immature.

The graphics are straightforward: middle column represent age, years are colored in accordance with achievements for that year; squads in witch they played are next and calculated grade for that year on the outside columns.  

They both had same career span, started and finished them at same age, played same position and wore the same number.

Here they are: