Relatives of Pelé met on Saturday, Christmas Eve, with the Brazilian football legend whose state of health has recently deteriorated, according to their social media posts.
• Read also: Pelé’s condition continues to deteriorate
Pelé, 82, who suffers from colon cancer discovered in September 2021, has been hospitalized in Sao Paulo since the end of November and his doctors had reported on Wednesday a “progression” of his cancer as well as a “insufficiency renal and cardiac.
His son Edinho posted a photo on Instagram where he takes Pelé’s hand, with the caption: “Dad, my strength is with you”.
Edinho, technical director of the Londrina football club, in the southern state of Parana, joined two of his sisters, Flavia and Kely Nascimento, at the Albert Einstein hospital on Saturday, who have been very present with Pelé in recent days.
“He has arrived,” wrote Kely Nascimento on Instagram in the caption of photos in which Edinho and his daughters, Sophia and Stephany Nascimento, appear.
Edinho made the trip despite having apologized the day before for not being able to be with his father. “I would like to be there, but today I have commitments here. I am not a doctor, I could not be of much help,” he told the daily Estadao on Friday.
Late Friday, Kely Nascimento had posted, still on Instagram, a moving photo of Pelé and her, embracing, him on his hospital bed, only half of his face visible, equipped with nasal cannulas for respiratory assistance.
“One more night together,” the caption read, “we’re still here, in the fight and in the faith.”
Just before the publication of an alarming health report from Pelé on Wednesday, his two daughters announced that they would spend Christmas in the hospital with the legendary ex-attacker, “for various reasons”.
No particular activity was notable on Saturday in front of the Einstein hospital, where only a few journalists were waiting for news of the only footballer to have won the World Cup three times (1958, 1962, 1970), noted AFP-TV.
Pelé was admitted to Einstein Hospital for a respiratory infection following covid contamination, and for a reassessment of his cancer treatment, the chemotherapy he was undergoing having apparently been ineffective.
