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Who really said it

A penalty is a cowardly way to score

Attributed to Pelé 1940–2022 · Brazilian forward, the only player to win three World Cups
Attributed Rights unconfirmed

Credited to Pelé everywhere and consistent with a habit ESPN’s 2015 retrospective reports — it says he was not Santos’s usual penalty taker, though that claim is itself unsourced — but no interview, match report or page of his own books has ever been produced for it. The oldest dated attribution we could find is an entry in Phil Shaw’s The Book of Football Quotations, which files the line under 1966 without saying where or to whom he said it.

Last verified 27 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“A penalty is a cowardly way to score” attributed to Pelé (1940–2022). No primary source has been located: Quote Investigator has never examined it, and Wikiquote's only citation is Goodreads. The earliest dated attribution found is Phil Shaw's The Book of Football Quotations, 9th ed. (Random House, 2011), p. 342, which dates the remark to 1966 without citing where it was said. Checked by Quotle.info, 27 Jul 2026.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Pelé — Brazilian forward · the only player to win three World Cups (1958, 1962, 1970). Theme: "A penalty is a cowardly way to score". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "A penalty is a cowardly way to score". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The paper trail

Speaker
Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento), 1940–2022
Quoted in
The Book of Football Quotations, 9th ed., p. 342
Entry dated
1966 — no venue, publication or interviewer given
Primary source
None located: no interview, no match report, no page of his own books

A penalty is a cowardly way to score. Free-floating — no surrounding text on record

The line always travels alone. No source has ever produced the sentence before or after it — no question it answered, no match it followed, no reporter who wrote it down. What Phil Shaw’s collection adds is not context but an editorial sting: it identifies the speaker as “PELE, whose 1,000th goal came from the penalty spot,” and dates the remark 1966.

Phil Shaw, The Book of Football Quotations (Google Books record)

How far the citations get

  • Quote Investigator ↗ has no file on this quote — a search for the phrase returns nothing. There is no specialist finding to anchor to, and no documented earliest attestation to defer to.
  • Wikiquote ↗ lists the line in its Quotes section, but the reference attached to it is nothing more than a link to a Goodreads author page ↗, which in turn credits Pelé: The Autobiography without a page number.
  • Wikipedia ↗ states that Pelé often refrained from taking penalties because he believed it a cowardly way to score, and cites Nick Miller’s 2015 ESPN piece ↗ — which offers only “Pele once said.”
  • In print, two different questions come apart. The earliest dated attribution we found is on page 342 of Phil Shaw’s The Book of Football Quotations (9th ed., 2011), which a Google Books full-text search ↗ surfaces attributed to “PELE, whose 1,000th goal came from the penalty spot” and dated 1966 — a date the entry does not source. It is not the earliest print appearance: the same search reports a full-text match fifteen years earlier, in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1996), and another in Webster’s New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005) — neither with a viewable snippet, so how those volumes attribute or date the line is unconfirmed.

No first publication can be identified for this wording, so no rights status can be asserted. Do not assume it is public domain: if Pelé said it, the remark belongs to the second half of the twentieth century, and any published transcription of it — in a newspaper, a book or a quotations anthology such as Phil Shaw’s 2011 edition — would be modern and in copyright to its own publisher.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

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Fact-check

Not misattributed — mis-sourced

Nobody has ever pinned this line on the wrong person. What has gone wrong is the sourcing: each citation hands off to another citation, and the chain never reaches a document.

“Pelé: The Autobiography” Unconfirmed

Goodreads ↗ files the line under Pelé: The Autobiography, and the social posts that carry the quote copy that credit verbatim. The attribution is user-supplied and gives no page. Google Books does not expose searchable text for that title, so we could not test the claim either way — it is unverified, not disproved.

Wikiquote’s footnote Circular

Wikiquote ↗ lists the quote in its main Quotes section, which normally signals a source. Its reference is a bare link to the same Goodreads author page — an aggregator citing an aggregator.

ESPN, and the listicles after it Undated

ESPN’s 2015 Pelé retrospective ↗ writes “‘A penalty is a cowardly way to score,’ Pele once said” and stops there. Wikipedia ↗ then cites ESPN for the statement that he believed penalties a cowardly way to score, and the obituaries and quote round-ups cite Wikipedia.

The attribution itself looks sound, and the behaviour behind it is on record — ESPN notes he was not Santos’s usual penalty taker ↗ even on the night of his 1,000th goal. But until someone produces the interview, the match report or the page, this is a quote we can credit, not a quote we can verify.

Context

Why the line has teeth

The sentence survives because it is an argument, not a pleasantry. A penalty is the one moment in football where the game stops being football: no defender, no angle to invent, twelve yards and a coin-flip. To call it cowardly is to say that a goal should be earned against resistance, and it is exactly the sort of thing the game’s greatest improviser would be expected to believe. That plausibility is why nobody ever asks for a source.

The awkward part is the record. The most celebrated single goal of Pelé’s career — O Milésimo, his 1,000th, at the Maracanã in November 1969 — came from the penalty spot. ESPN’s account notes he was not Santos’s usual penalty taker ↗ but took that one because, in the circumstances, nobody else was going to. Phil Shaw’s quotations book prints the same irony straight into its attribution line, identifying Pelé as the man “whose 1,000th goal came from the penalty spot.”

The quote is everywhere. The moment he said it is nowhere.

What we checked, and what came back

Quote Investigator — a site search for the phrase returns “Nothing Found.” The specialists have never taken this one apart, so there is no anchor finding to defer to.

Wikiquote — carries the line in its main Quotes section, not under Misattributed or Disputed. Its sole footnote is a link to a Goodreads author page.

Goodreads — credits Pelé: The Autobiography. The credit is user-supplied and carries no page number; Google Books does not expose searchable text for that title or for My Life and the Beautiful Game, so we could neither confirm nor refute it.

Google Books — a full-text search puts the line on page 342 of Phil Shaw’s The Book of Football Quotations, dated 1966. It also reports full-text matches in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1996) and Webster’s New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), but with no viewable snippet, so how those volumes attribute it is unconfirmed.

Portuguese — the line does circulate in Portuguese, in two settled wordings: O Futebolero ↗ gives “Um pênalti é uma maneira covarde de se fazer um gol” and places it in an interview given years before his death, without naming the interview, the date or the outlet; Pensador ↗ and other Brazilian round-ups give “Um pênalti é uma forma covarde de fazer um gol” with no source at all. Every Portuguese copy we found is an undated aggregator or press repetition, so the original-language trail ends where the English one does — which strengthens the finding rather than weakening it.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Character Success

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Peléen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line among Pelé's quotes. The page has no Misattributed section, and this entry's only footnote points at a Goodreads author page.
Wikipedia: Peléen.wikipedia.org

States that he often refrained from taking penalties because he believed it a cowardly way to score — sourced to the ESPN piece below.
Quote Investigator (search)quoteinvestigator.com

Returns nothing. The quote has never been investigated there, so no specialist earliest-attestation exists to defer to.
ESPN FC: Top 10 Pelé moments (2015, archived)web.archive.org

Nick Miller's retrospective, the citation Wikipedia relies on. It introduces the quote with "Pele once said" and gives no source.
The Book of Football Quotations (Google Books record)books.google.com

Phil Shaw's ninth edition (Random House, 30 April 2011, 576 pp.) — the reference work whose page 342 carries the line with an 1966 date.
Goodreads: Pelé quoteswww.goodreads.com

The aggregator page that credits the line to Pelé: The Autobiography, and the ultimate source of most copies online — including Wikiquote's footnote.

The true author, as far as the record goes

Who was Pelé?

Pelé

1940–2022 · Brazilian forward · the only player to win three World Cups (1958, 1962, 1970)

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known as Pelé, played almost his whole career for Santos before finishing it with the New York Cosmos, and won the World Cup with Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970 — still the only player to do so. Wikipedia records 1,279 goals in 1,363 games including exhibition matches, a Guinness World Record. Because his name sells anything it is stapled to, he is also one of the most quote-farmed figures in sport: dozens of tidy aphorisms circulate under his byline with no source attached, and this is one of them.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available source

No primary source located. Earliest dated attribution found: Phil Shaw, The Book of Football Quotations, 9th ed. (Random House, 2011), 342, where the line is attributed to Pelé and dated 1966 without further citation.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A penalty is a cowardly way to score’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-penalty-is-a-cowardly-way-to-score/

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