Not sure I've posted this before, but about a decade ago I used to work with a guy in his late 70's who in the 50's/60's/70's pretty much used to live for football and had seen most of the greats in that era live in the flesh. Always rated his opinion on football matters as even in old age he seemed pretty sound with his opinion on the current generation of footballers.
Anyway, he pointed something out that I think is worth considering in these types of discussions - a point that I've rarely seen mentioned anywhere else - which was that to his eye the biggest change in the sport by far isn't to do with vastly increased fitness levels, ball technology, or tactics (which to him were irrelevant since the likes of Pele et al would be able to adjust or benefit themselves), but rather the biggest change is with goalkeepers. His view was that keepers in the modern game have improved to such an extent that keepers today are completely unrecognizable to the keepers you had during bygone era's. Today's keepers are taken for granted, but on a whole they're significantly better shot stoppers, far better distributors, they're alot more rounded and excel at other aspects of goalkeeping (coming off the line quickly, making themselves big, punching, catching, long throws, etc), and in many cases they'are alot bigger physically (man mountains vs normal sized guys) and better coached (a byproduct of the continuous learning from keepers who've added or popularized a new technique, e.g. Schmeical and his instant counter-attacking overarm long-throw) than keepers half a century ago.
On top of this, the depth of quality goalkeeping is infinitely better than what it was - he said Banks was a good keeper but beyond a couple of other good keepers in that era the rest were amateur standard in today's game. Keepers like Buffon, Schmeichel, Khan, that level of goalkeeping simply didn't exist at that time, and nowadays even mediocre or piss poor nations have decent keepers who are light years ahead of what equivalent teams in the 50's - 80's had.
It's an interesting point to consider imo. Maybe the lighter balls we have today would counter to this to a degree, but you still have to wonder how many of Pele's less famous goals would have been tipped round the post today. When looking at the low quality videos of matches in the Pele era, aside from fitness, the one player who does tend to stick out like a sore thumb is usually the keeper, and not just because of the weird "kit" (often gloveless?) they used to have. They just look odd positionally, the way they dive, the way the kick the ball, even their height (they do seem quite small).
I guess the point here would be that this should count massively in Messi's favor in the Messi vs Pele debates. I have no idea how good Gordon Banks was, but based on what I've been told (admittedly by one person, albeit someone who's opinion I value), I would bet Pele never had to face a keeper of Manuel Neuer's pedigree, let alone an entire competition full of keepers close to that standard.
