Some hours before Lionel Messi once again rocked Bangladesh and the world on Saturday night, news started trickling in that Edson Arantes do Nascimento, much better known as Pele, had entered palliative care after his body had stopped responding to chemotherapy treatment for cancer. 

It is difficult for me to explain the Brazilian legend's impact on me as a fledgling football fan to a generation of aficionados who have had ready access to live football, game footage, and statistical analysis from around the globe. Back when we started watching the game, the only live international football available to us was the World Cup, and Pele had already retired as a Selecao. 

Yet through stories told by my forebears, books, rare football television shows and VHS recordings, the legend of Pele was formed in my impressionable mind. 

A legend that was cemented by the film "Escape to Victory". When Pele scored with a bicycle kick at the end of the movie, I jumped and screamed as hard as I ever have during a real football match. Pele's remonstrations to Sylvester Stallone's character saying, "If we leave now, we lose more than a game. Please, Hutch!" still ring in my ear, decades after I last watched the film. 

A legend that was enhanced in 1990 when he made a cameo appearance in the charity game held on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. The stamina was not there but I was nearly brought to tears by his earnest yet gracefulgait.

The numbers and visual confirmation came later. The prodigious games to goals ratio. The wins over expected average statistics. The assists. The abundance of game footage and testimonials on YouTube. They only served to confirm what I had already gleaned from material of almost folklore accuracy. That this was one of the greatest athletes to have ever graced the face of our planet.

Still, no number of facts and figures can encapsulate the sheer joy and love for the game that the two syllables, Pele, generated in my childhood heart. He was my first football superstar, my first icon. 

It was heartbreakingly poetic that on the night we learned of Pele's deteriorating condition, we witnessed another legend, in the twilight of his career, dig deep into his reserve of glorious, if slightly fading, skills to push his country forward for one more round. 

When it comes to the so-called GOAT (Greatest of All Time) debate, I do not endorse it. I simply do not believe that you can compare players across different eras, regardless of how sophisticated the statistical metrics are employed.

I do believe, however, that there are millions of children around the globe, whose lives have been rendered infinitely more joyful by the legend of Leo. A legend gleaned from the stories of their forebears, and from a magical aura that runs far deeper than the facts and statistics that they will learn much later to justify their devotion to the little master from Rosario.     

And that is why I believe that both Messi and Pele stand proudly as equals in the pantheon of the greatest to have ever played the game.