Legendary footballer Pele has died at age of 82
2022.12.29 14:27
Legendary footballer Pele has died at age of 82
Budrigannews.com – On Thursday, Pele, the legendary soccer player from Brazil who rose from barefoot poverty to become one of the greatest and most well-known athletes of modern times, passed away at the age of 82.
Kely Nascimento, his daughter, posted on Instagram that she had received confirmation of the death of the only player to win the World Cup three times.
Since he had a tumor removed from his colon in September 2021, Pele had been receiving chemotherapy on a regular basis.
After a failed hip operation in 2012, he also had trouble walking on his own. On the eve of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020, his son Edinho stated that Pele’s frail physical condition had depressed him.
In 1956, Pele, who went by the name Edson Arantes do Nascimento, joined Santos and made the small coastal team one of football’s most famous names.
He won two Intercontinental Cups, an annual competition between the best teams in Europe and South America, in addition to numerous regional and national titles. The Copa Libertadores is the South American equivalent of the Champions League.
He won three World Cups, the first as a 17-year-old in Sweden in 1958, the second in Chile four years later despite missing most of the tournament due to injury, and the third in Mexico in 1970, when he led what is considered to be one of the greatest teams ever to play the game. He won the World Cup in Mexico in 1970.
He left Santos in 1974, but a year later, he surprised everyone by signing a lucrative contract to play for the New York Cosmos, a team in the then-new North American Soccer League.
In a brilliant 21-year profession he scored 1,283 objectives.
However, unlike any other player before or since, Pele transcended soccer and became one of the first global icons of the 20th century.
He was better known than many Hollywood stars, popes, and presidents because of his winning smile and humble demeanor, which charmed thousands of fans. Many, if not most, of these people he met during his six-decade career as a player and corporate pitchman.
He attributed his one-of-a-kind combination of talent, inventive genius, and technical skill to his youth spent playing pick-up games in a small Brazilian town. His family could not afford a real ball, so he frequently used grapefruit or wadded-up rags.
The International Olympic Committee called Pele the “Athlete of the Century,” FIFA called him the “Football Player of the Century,” and Brazil’s government called him a “national treasure.”
His fame frequently overwhelmed. In his presence, mature adults frequently wept out loud. During his time as a player, souvenir-seeking fans frequently rushed the field after games and tore off his shorts, socks, and even underwear.
He lived less than a mile from a beach in Brazil, but he never went there because he was afraid of crowds.
He rarely complained, however, even when he was alone with friends. He spoke movingly about how soccer enabled him to travel the world, cheer on cancer patients and war and famine survivors, and provide for a family that frequently did not know where their next meal would come from. He believed that his talent was a divine gift.
“For one reason, God gave me this ability: to make people happy,” he told Reuters in a 2013 interview. Regardless of what I did, I made an effort not to fail to remember that.”
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