Former Argentina captain Diego Maradona has discredited the Ballon d’Or prix d’Honneur given to Brazilian idol, Pele by the world football governing body FIFA.<\/p>\n
The Argentina legend said\u00a0that Pele will always be second-best to him.<\/p>\n
Although,\u00a0there is the built in Argentina-Brazil rivalry, but the former world footballer of the year seems to be taking this too far.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can you say that Pele received the Ballon d\u2019Or before me? I received the award in Paris [in 1996]. So to make Pele the first one to receive the award before me is a huge mistake,\u201d Maradona\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to me, Pele will always remain second best in football when compared to Maradona. Look at it this way, in his own country, Brazil, Pele is the second best sportsman after Ayrton Senna [the former F1 driver].<\/p>\n
\u201cPele will always be second, be it in international football or in Brazilian sports. The sad thing is that he is second best and he will continue to stay in that position.\u00a0While presenting the award [this year\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or] to Cristiano Ronaldo, Pele uttered his name as \u2018Cristiano Leonardo\u2019. This just shows where he belongs.\u201d He added.<\/p>\n
Fifa decided to honour Pele with the award years after his career due to the Brazilian’s ineligibility to receive d ballon d’Or during his playing days, as it was meant for Europe based players.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Argentina captain Diego Maradona has discredited the Ballon d’Or prix d’Honneur given to Brazilian idol, Pele by the world football governing body FIFA. The Argentina legend said\u00a0that Pele will always be second-best to him. Although,\u00a0there is the built in Argentina-Brazil rivalry, but the former world footballer of the year seems to be taking this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[85,60],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/1061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}