The 82-year-old Pele, a legendary Brazilian soccer player who came from barefoot squalor to become one of the greatest and most well-known athletes in modern history, passed away on Thursday.
The Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo, where Pele was receiving treatment, reported that he passed away at 3:27 p.m. On his Instagram account, the lone player to win the World Cup three times was confirmed to have passed away.
“Inspiration and love marked the journey of King Pele, who peacefully passed away today. Enchanted the world with his genius in sport, stopped a war, carried out social works all over the world and spread what he most believed to be the cure for all our problems: love.”
Since having a colon tumour removed in September 2021, Pele had been undergoing chemotherapy. In addition, ever since a failed hip operation in 2012, he struggled to walk unassisted. In February 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic, his son Edinho asserted that Pele was depressed because of his deteriorating health.
In the stadium of Santos, Pele’s hometown team where he began playing as a teenager and rapidly rose to fame, a 24-hour wake will be held for him on Monday.
His coffin will be carried in a procession through the streets of Santos the following day, passing by the neighbourhood where his 100-year-old mother resides before arriving at the Ecumenical Memorial Necropolis cemetery, where he’ll be laid to rest in a private ceremony.
Pele, real name Edson Arantes do Nascimento, agreed to join Santos in 1956 and helped make the small coastal team one of football’s most recognisable brands.
Among the many regional and national titles Pele won were the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup, an annual contest between the best clubs in Europe and South America.
In spite of missing most of the competition due to injury, he won three World Cup championship medals: the first in Sweden in 1958 when he was just 17 years old, the second in Chile four years later, and the third in Mexico in 1970 while leading one of the greatest teams in tournament history.
Depending on how matches are counted, he scored between 1,281 and 1,283 goals over the course of a glorious 21-year career. Pele, however, went over and above soccer and emerged as one of the 1st worldwide icons of the 20th century, like no other player before or since.
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