The Run of Play‘s Brian Phillips in Slate, on the never-ending argument over Pelé and Diego Maradona:

Scrape away the grime of scandals and sound bites, and the contrast between these two great players says something about the imaginative possibilities presented by this game or by any game. Think of how you approach sports at different stages of your life. Pelé, the best player on the best team who scored the most goals and won the most trophies and was the happiest and the most famous and most beloved, offers the child’s narrative of sports heroism, an exuberant conquest of a just and welcoming world. Maradona, who railed against authority and sabotaged himself and, in 1986, dragged an inferior Argentina team to the World Cup title by sheer force of will, represents the adolescent narrative: an unjust world forced to yield to a superior ego.

It’s these two ways of looking at the world that guide the endless, unresolvable debate about which man was the better player.

Good stuff. Make with the clicky, people.