Pelé, the Brazilian soccer legend who won three World Cups and became the sport’s first global icon, has died at the age of 82, according to a statement from his daughter Kely Nascimento on Instagram.
Pelé was admitted to a hospital in São Paulo in late November for a respiratory infection and for complications related to colon cancer. Last week, the hospital said his health had worsened as his cancer progressed. He died on Thursday from multiple organ failure due to the progression of colon cancer, according to a statement from Albert Einstein Hospital.
For more than 60 years, the name Pelé has been synonymous with soccer. He played in four World Cups and is the only player in history to win three, but his legacy stretched far beyond his trophy haul and remarkable goal-scoring record.
“I was born to play football, just like Beethoven was born to write music and Michelangelo was born to paint,” Pelé famously said.
Pelé was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in Três Corações — an inland city roughly 155 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro — in 1940, before his family moved to the city of Bauru in São Paulo.
The genesis of the nickname Pelé are unclear, even to the footballer. He once wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian that it likely started with school classmates teasing him for mangling the nickname of another player, Bilé. Whatever the origin, the moniker stuck.
“My dad was a good football player, he scored a lot of goals,” Pelé told CNN in 2015. “His name was Dondinho; I wanted to be like him.
“He was famous in Brazil, in Minas Gerais. He was my role model. I always wanted to be like him, but what happened, to this day, only God can explain.”
Pele passed away on December 29, 2022, but his legendary status remains in the hearts of football fans.
The legend caused a ceasefire when he and his Santos teammates visited Nigeria in 1969 during the country’s civil war and reports have it that there was a cease-fire for 48 hours to allow the then Green Eagles take on Santos.
Having pulled out of the Copa Libertadores, Santos embarked on a world tour and visited some African countries, but the team arrived in Nigeria right in the middle of the war. Both teams were billed to face off in two separate matches, with the first ending 2-2, and of course, Pele scored both goals for the Brazilian outfit. Santos then travelled to Benin where they played another exhibition match against the Eagles, and the greatness of the fixture was so huge that the then state Military Governor Samuel Ogbemudia declared a public holiday.
He ordered the opening of the bridge that connected Benin with Biafra and more than 25000 fans stormed the stadium to see how Pele guided the visitors to a 2-1 win. In 2020, Pele Tweeted:
“I always tried to send this message, as football player and as a man. One of my greatest pride was to have stopped a war in Nigeria, in 1969, in one the many football tours that Santos made around the world.”
The governor of the old Midwestern state later Bendel state, Colonel Osagbovo Ogbemudia later promoted to the rank of Brigadier General had a warm hand shake with King Pele in 1972 after the Nigerian civil war.
In attendance during Pele and his Santos football club of Brazil courtesy visit to the then governor, was the young business man, Chief Sir Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion the present Esama of Benin as spotted in the visitation photograph.
The late Brigadier General invited Pele and his Santos football club of Brazil to play Vipers football club of Benin (Bendel Insurance FC) in a friendly match at Ogbe Stadium renamed Sam Ogbemudia Stadium.
Sports Brief earlier reported that Santos have resolved to pay tribute to legend Pele by updating the club’s crest.
The Brazilian football club will use a crown emblazoned on its uniform as a tribute to the three-time World Cup winner.
Portuguese star forward Cristiano Ronaldo sent his condolences to Brazil in a post on Instagram, saying “a mere “goodbye” to the eternal King Pelé will never be enough to express the pain that currently engulfs the entire football world.”
Kylian Mbappé of Paris Saint-Germain said of Pelé’s death: “The king of football has left us but his legacy will never be forgotten.”
Brazil’s incoming President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took to Twitter to pay his respects to Pelé, saying “few Brazilians took the name of our country as far as he did.”
“As different from Portuguese as the language was, foreigners from the four corners of the planet soon found a way to pronounce the magic word: ‘Pelé,'” Lula added.
A public wake will be held for Pelé on Monday at the Urbano Caldeira stadium, popularly known as Vila Belmiro and home to Santos football club, in Brazil’s São Paulo state, according to a Thursday statement from Santos FC.
At dawn Monday, Pele’s body will be moved from the Albert Einstein Hospital to the stadium. The soccer legend’s coffin will be placed in the center of the pitch.
The wake at Vila Belmiro will continue until Tuesday 10 a.m. local time (8 a.m. ET), after which a funeral procession will carry Pelé’s coffin through the streets of the city of Santos, including the street where Pelé’s 100-year-old mother, Celeste Arantes, lives.
The cortege will continue to Pelé’s final resting place, the Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica cemetery in Santos, where a private funeral, reserved for family members, will be held.
Debate will inevitably rage about whether Pelé is the greatest player of all time — whether it is possible to compare Pelé’s achievements to those of Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, who have rewritten soccer’s record books over the past 15 years, or to Diego Maradona, the late Argentinian star who captivated the footballing world in the 1980s and 90s.
In 2000, FIFA jointly named Maradona and Pelé as Player of the Century, but to some, the outright winner of the award should have been obvious.
“This debate about the player of the century is absurd,” said Zico, who represented Brazil in the decade after Pelé’s retirement. “There’s only one possible answer: Pelé. He’s the greatest player of all time, and by some distance, I might add.”
There is little doubt, however, that Pelé was, and always will be, football’s first global superstar.
“If I pass away one day, I am happy because I tried to do my best,” Pele told The Talks online magazine. “My sport allowed me to do so much because it’s the biggest sport in the world.”
