The three-time World Cup champion and legendary Brazilian soccer player Pelé has passed away. He was 82.
The announcement was made this Thursday by his daughter, Kely Nascimento, and confirmed by his agent, Joe Fraga.
He had been undergoing colon cancer treatment since 2021.
Pele, whose real name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento, started playing for Santos at the age of 15 and for the Brazilian national team a year later. At the 1958 World Cup, he made his debut as a 17-year-old.
With the Brazilian club Santos and the Brazil national team, Pelé, widely recognized as one of football’s greatest players, spent nearly two decades thrilling fans and stunning rivals as the sport’s most prolific scorer.
According to various reports, the Brazilian football monarch won a record three World Cups—in 1958, 1962, and 1970—and scored somewhere between 650 and 1,281 goals in his career.
Having risen from utter poverty in the streets of Minas Gerais state, Pelé was also the first black national hero of modern Brazil.
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