Football star Pele, Brazilian legend of the beautiful game, dies at 82

PELE, the legendary Brazilian footballer who rose from barefoot poverty to become one of the greatest and best-known athletes in modern history, died on Thursday (Dec 29) at the age of 82. Sao Paulo’s Albert Einstein hospital, where Pele was undergoing treatment, said he died due to “multiple organ failures resulting from the progression of colon cancer associated with his previous medical condition”. Tributes poured in from across the worlds of sport, politics and popular culture for a figure who epitomised Brazil’s dominance of the beautiful game. The government of President Jair Bolsonaro, who leaves office on Jan 1, declared three days of mourning, and said in a statement that Pele was “a great citizen and patriot, raising the name of Brazil wherever he went.” His successor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, wrote on Twitter that “few Brazilians carried the name of our country as far as he did”.

US President Joe Biden said on his Twitter that Pele’s rise from humble beginnings to football legend was a story of “what is possible”. French President Emmanuel Macron said Pele’s legacy would live forever. Pele – the only man to win the World Cup three times as a player – had been undergoing chemotherapy since he had a tumour removed from his colon in September 2021. He also had difficulty walking unaided since an unsuccessful hip operation in 2012. In February 2020, his son Edinho said Pele’s ailing physical state had left him depressed. On Monday, a 24-hour wake will be held for Pele at the stadium of Santos, his hometown club where he started playing as a teenager and quickly rose to fame. The next day, a procession carrying his coffin will pass through the streets of Santos, passing the neighbourhood where his 100-year-old mother lives, and ending at the Ecumenical Memorial Necropolis cemetery, where he will be buried in a private ceremony. Pele, whose given name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento, joined Santos in 1956 and turned the small coastal club into one of the most famous names in football. In addition to a host of regional and national titles, Pele won two Copa Libertadores, the South American equivalent of the Champions League, and two Intercontinental Cups, the annual tournament held between the best teams in Europe and South America. The first of his three World Cup winners’ medals came when he was just 17 years old in Sweden in 1958. The second was clinched in Chile four years later – even though he missed most of the tournament through injury – and the third in Mexico in 1970, when he led what is considered to be one of the greatest sides ever to play the game. He retired from Santos in 1974 but a year later made a surprise comeback by signing a lucrative deal to join the New York Cosmos in the then-nascent North American Soccer League. In a glorious 21-year career he scored between 1,281 and 1,283 goals, depending on how matches are counted. Pele, though, transcended football, like no player before or since, and he became one of the first global icons of the 20th century. With his winning smile and a humility that charmed legions of fans, he was better known than many Hollywood stars, popes or presidents – many if not most of whom he met during a six-decade-long career as player and corporate pitchman. Pele credited his one-of-a-kind mix of talent, creative genius and technical skill to a youth spent playing pick-up games in small town Brazil, often using grapefruit or wadded-up rags because his family could not afford a real ball. Pele was named Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee, co-Football Player of the Century by football’s governing body Fifa, and a “national treasure” by Brazil’s government. His celebrity was often overwhelming. Grown adults broke down crying in his presence with regularity. When he was a player, souvenir-seeking fans rushed the field following games and tore off his shorts, socks and even underwear. Yet even in unguarded moments among friends, he rarely complained. He believed that his talent was a divine gift, and he spoke movingly about how soccer allowed him to travel the world, bring cheer to cancer patients and survivors of wars and famine, and provide for a family that, growing up, often did not know the source of their next meal. “God gave me this ability for one reason: To make people happy,” he said in a 2013 interview with Reuters. “No matter what I did, I tried not to forget that.” REUTERS