World football mourns the loss of perhaps its greatest player. Brazil’s three-time world champion Pelé died on Thursday (December 29, 2022) at the age of 82, his family confirmed this.
He had been ill for some time and recently had to be treated in the hospital. “Everything we are, we are because of you. We love you forever. Rest in peace”his daughter Kely Nascimento wrote on Instagram.
Pelé was three times world champion with Brazil
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, as Pelé was actually called, had cancer. A year ago he was diagnosed with a tumor in his colon. At the end of November, Pelé was taken to a hospital in Sao Paulo to have his chemotherapy reassessed.
At Christmas, the family of Brazil’s football legend gathered at the Albert Einstein Hospital at his bedside. Daughter Kely Cristina Nascimento posted a family photo on her Instagram page on Saturday night, which also includes Pelé’s wife Marcia Aoki.
“Thank you all,” wrote Pele’s daughter
“Merry Christmas. Gratitude, love, togetherness, family. The essence of Christmas. Thank you all for all the love and light you send. In this crazy and amazing life I would be nothing without you”wrote the 55-year-old to the picture. “Today and forever: Merry Christmas and all the best.”
What remains are the memories. To a footballer like there will never be again. International debut at 16, world champion at his first World Cup just a year later, he scored twice in the final. Two more world titles followed.
26 titles in 17 years
With FC Santos, Pelé won 26 titles in 17 years and scored 501 goals in 493 games. If you count only the competitive games he played for Brazil, FC Santos and later New York Cosmos, the record is hardly less impressive: 775 goals in 841 games.