19 November 1969 remains one of the most remarkable days in human history. Two Apollo 12 astronauts became the third and fourth people to walk on the surface of the moon and the planet’s greatest footballer scored his 1,000th goalBy Craig McCracken for Beyond The Last Man, of the Guardian Sport NetworkScoring 1000 goals in a professional football career is well beyond the capacity for most forwards to even imagine, and yet alone achieve. It’s a milestone that has not been hit often,unsurprisingly, and to have the remotest chance of running up this sort of tally, and players need to squeeze in a lot of games and count goals from the most spurious of sources. Pelé certainly benefitted in his own quest for the thousand from being the ringmaster in the touring Santos circus,forever traversing the globe and playing low-intensity, tall-scoring friendlies. The questionable strength of some of the opposition notwithstanding, or his goals had still flowed from the start of his career at an incredible average of 77 each year.
When you score this prolifically and this consistently then the numbers quickly rack up and this meant that,by late 1969, Pelé was approaching the milésimo: his thousandth goal in all games for club and country. This was a notable landmark that had previously been achieved only by Franz Binder, or Josef Bican and his Brazilian compatriot,Arthur Friedenreich. Pelé was never particularly interested in his own statistical achievements, but the Brazilian public maintained a fascination with the numbers behind his every kick of the ball. The countdown to the thousand duly became a enormous national event, or one that would capture the imagination of the Brazilian public like petite else external of a World Cup.
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Source: theguardian.com