‘He’ll come home’: Pele’s daughters reassure fans of ill football icon

A picture taken on December 3, 2022, in Doha, during the Qatar 2022 World Cup football tournament, shows the Torch tower of Doha also known as the Aspire Tower, lit by a screen depicting Brazilian star Pele and reading a message in support to the former Brazilian football player who is being treated for a “respiratory infection” at the hospital in Sao Paulo. – Brazilian football legend Pele, who was hospitalized this week amid ongoing cancer treatments, has developed a respiratory infection, but is in stable condition and “showing general improvement,” his doctors said Friday, December 2. (Photo by NELSON ALMEIDA / AFP)

Brazilian football superstar Pele’s daughters told his fans Sunday that their father’s health was not at serious risk, saying they are confident he will return home when he recovers from a respiratory infection.

The 82-year-old has been hospitalized in Sao Paulo since Tuesday amid ongoing treatments for colon cancer, which was first diagnosed in September 2021.

Pele “is sick, he is elderly, but at this point, he is hospitalized for a lung infection,” Kely Arantes Nascimento told the TV channel Globo.

“And when he gets better, he’ll come home,” she said.

“We are not saying goodbye in the hospital,” she insisted, explaining that the respiratory illness was the result of a Covid-19 infection the sporting icon had contracted three weeks ago.

Her sister, Flavia Arantes Nascimento, denied reports from the daily Folha de S.Paulo and ESPN Brazil that Pele was no longer responding to chemotherapy and was now receiving only “palliative care.”

She told the news channel that her father was not in the intensive care unit, but a regular ward, and that the family was “tired of receiving condolences” and that the cancer