Pele succumbs after a long battle with cancer and leaves the world in mourning

FILE PHOTO: Pele – Brazil celebrates a goal Action Images via Reuters/File Photo

Pele, the legendary Brazilian soccer player who rose from barefoot poverty to become one of the greatest and best-known athletes in modern history, died on Thursday at the age of 82.

Sao Paulo’s Albert Einstein hospital, where Pele was undergoing treatment, said he died at 3:27 p.m. “due to multiple organ failures resulting from the progression of colon cancer associated with his previous medical condition.”

The death of the only man to win the World Cup three times as a player was confirmed on his Instagram account.

“Inspiration and love marked the journey of King Pele, who peacefully passed away today,” it read, adding he had “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.”

FILE PHOTO: Brazilian soccer legend and member of the 1958, 1962 and 1970 World Cup-winning Brazilian soccer teams Pele holds the World Cup trophy during the World Cup 2006 opening ceremony in Munich, Germany, June 9, 2006. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez/File Photo

Tributes poured in from across the worlds of sport, politics and popular culture for a figure who epitomized Brazil’s dominance of the beautiful game.

The government of President Jair Bolsonaro, who leaves office on Sunday, 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.”

Bolsonaro’s successor, President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, wrote on Twitter that “few Brazilians carried the name of our country as far as he did.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said Pele’s legacy would live forever. “The game. The king. Eternity,” Macron tweeted.

Pele had been undergoing chemotherapy since he had a tumor removed from his colon in September 2021.

He also had difficulty walking unaided since an unsuccessful hip operation in 2012. In February 2020, on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic, his son Edinho said Pele’s ailing physical state had left him depressed.

FILE PHOTO: Brazil’s soccer legend Pele holds a soccer ball as he arrives for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) Gala in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 5, 2013. REUTERS/Nacho Doce//File Photo

What’s possible

On Monday, a 24-hour wake will be held for Pele in the center of the field 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 neighborhood where his 100-year-old mother lives, and ending at the Ecumenical Memorial Necropolis cemetery, where he will be buried in a private ceremony.US President Joe Biden said on his Twitter that Pele’s rise from humble beginnings to soccer legend was a story of “what is possible.”

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.

He took home three World Cup winner’s medals, the first time as a 17-year-old in Sweden in 1958, the second 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.

FILE PHOTO: Brazil’s soccer legend Pele acknowledges the crowd before the 2012 African Cup of Nations semi-final soccer match between Ivory Coast and Mali in Stade De L’Amitie Stadium in Libreville, Gabon, February 8, 2012. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo

Private person

In a glorious 21-year career, he scored between 1,281 and 1,283 goals, depending on how matches are counted.

Pele, though, transcended soccer, like no player before or since, and he became one of the first global icons of the 20th century.

With his winning smile and an aw-shucks 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’s house in Brazil was less than a mile from a beach, but he didn’t go there for some two decades because of fear of crowds.

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 during a 2013 interview with Reuters. “No matter what I did, I tried not to forget that.”

With everything he did, the world will also never forget Pele. —Reuters