This unfortunate passing has been something we were mostly expecting due to his on going battle with multiple health issues.
Pelé, the Brazilian soccer star who led his country’s national team to that World Cup victory in 1956 and who, in the 1960s and 70s, rivaled Muhammad Ali as the world’s most popular and recognizable athlete, died Thursday at a Sao Paulo hospital. He was 82, and had been in poor health for the last several years as he battled cancer and what the hospital described in a statement this week as “kidney and cardiac dysfunctions.”
