Soccer legend, Pele, dies during long battle with cancer

(FILES) In this file photo taken on December 8, 2005 Brazilian football legend, Pele, is seen during a presentation in Leipzig on the eve of the final draw of the Fifa football World Cup 2006. – Brazilian football legend Pele, 80, was briefly transferred back to an intensive care unit on September 17, 2021 after suffering breathing difficulties but is now stable, said the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, where he underwent surgery earlier this month. (Photo by Franck FIFE / AFP)

PELÉ, the Brazilian soccer legend, who won three World Cups, has died at the age of 82. 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, he became the sport’s first global icon. “Everything that we are, is thanks to you,” his daughter Kely Nascimento wrote in a post on Instagram. “We love you infinitely. Rest in peace.”

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. “I was born to play football, just like Beethoven was born to write music and Michelangelo was born to paint,” Pelé famously said. “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. ”

Regarded as one of the greatest players of all time and labelled “the greatest” by FIFA, he was among the most successful and popular sports figures of the 20th century.

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