Brazilian soccer legend Pele has been discharged from the hospital where he received treatment for nearly a month, after having surgery for a colon tumor. The 80-year-old had been receiving treatment at Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo. The tumor was found when he went for routine tests at the end of August.
The patient is stable and will continue with chemotherapy,” doctors from the hospital said in a statement.
“I am so happy to be back at home. I want to thank the entire Albert Einstein Hospital team. The ones who made my stay a pleasant one, with a humane and very affectionate welcome.” Pelé wrote in a post on his official Instagram.
“Thanks also to all of you, who from afar, make my life complete with so many messages of love. When the road is hard, celebrate every step of the journey. Focus on your happiness. It’s true that I can’t jump anymore. But these past few days, I’ve been punching the air more often than usual,” he wrote.
Pele, only player in history to win three World Cups
Regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Pele is Brazil’s all-time leading scorer with 77 goals in 92 matches. He has scored a total of 1,279 goals in 1,363 games before retiring in 1977. He is only behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Josef Bican on the official all-time top goalscorers list. In 2000, Pelé was voted World Player of the Century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS). He was also one of the two joint winners of the FIFA Player of the Century.
The one who burst onto the world football scene at age 17, excelling both for club team Santos and the Brazilian national side. Winning the FIFA World Cup is the absolute pinnacle in the career of any football player. And By the end of his career, Pelé had won three FIFA World Cups (1958, 1962, and 1970) with Brazil, the most wins of the World Cup by any player. This record is Pele’s to keep because of how impossible it is for a modern soccer player to replicate this achievement.