Football: 'He'll come home', Pele's daughters reassure fans of ill icon
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Fans of Pele in front of the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, where the football legend is hospitalised, on Sunday.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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SAO PAULO – Brazilian football legend Pele’s daughters told his fans on 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 hospitalised in Sao Paulo since last Tuesday
Pele “is sick, he is elderly but, at this point, he is hospitalised 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 that 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 receiving only “palliative care”.
She told the news channel that her father was not in the intensive care unit, but in a regular ward, and that the family was “tired of receiving condolences” and that the cancer treatment is “delivering results”.
“It’s really unfair that they’re saying he’s at the terminal stage. It’s not that, believe us,” she said.
Earlier on Sunday, fans of Pele – born Edson Arantes do Nascimento – congregated outside the hospital where the three-time world champion is staying.
More than 100 devotees prayed for the recovery of the man widely regarded as the greatest footballer of all time.
“We are a spiritual force” praying for the sporting idol as he wages “one of the toughest battles of his life”, one fan, Marcos Bispo dos Santos, told AFP.
Doctors at Sao Paulo’s Albert Einstein Hospital said on Saturday that Pele remained “stable”.
Pele “has had a good response to care without any worsening in the clinical picture in the last 24 hours,” they said in a statement.
The star later struck an optimistic note in an Instagram post,
“I’m strong, with a lot of hope, and I follow my treatment as usual.”
On Sunday, his fans stood mostly in silence outside the clinic in the Morumbi neighbourhood of western Sao Paulo, holding a banner bearing an image of a youthful Pele and marked “Torcida Joven” (Young Fans).
“Long live the king!” said several posters pasted on walls near entrances to the hospital.
Around noon, the fans formed a circle and held hands as they recited an “Our Father” prayer. AFP
