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Brazil legend Pelé moved to special care unit in hospital Brazil legend Pelé ‘doing fine’ despite move to special care unit
(34 minutes later)
The Brazil football legend Pelé has been moved into a special care unit in hospital in São Paulo, according to reports. The Brazil football legend Pelé was on Thursday moved to a special care unit of a São Paulo hospital where he is being treated for a urinary infection.
The 74-year old who won three World Cups during his glittering playing career was admitted to the Albert Einstein hospital in São Paulo on Monday with a urinary infection. He had an operation at the same hospital on 12 November to remove kidney stones and was discharged three days later. The Brazilian website globo.com quoted a Pelé adviser, Jose Fornos Rodrigues, as saying that the 74-year-old was “doing fine” and could be discharged as early as Friday.
On that occasion Pelé had been admitted with abdominal pains that forced him to cancel a book signing event in Santos, where he lives. “The problem was that he was receiving too many visitors and that wasn’t helping, so they transferred him to a calmer area to continue receiving the proper treatment,” Rodrigues told the Associated Press.
Tests showed that arguably the world’s greatest footballer was suffering from kidney and ureteral stones. “He is clinically stable and in recovery,” doctors said on his release from hospital on 15 November. The hospital earlier sparked a scare by announcing that Pelé had been taken to a special care unit because of “clinical instability”. That led to reports that the former striker’s condition had worsened but the hospital stated that he was not in intensive care.
On Thursday Jose Fornos Rodrigues, the former player’s personal aide, said Pele was “completely fine” and the move was primarily to protect his privacy. Pelé was admitted to Albert Einstein hospital on Tuesday with a urinary infection, two weeks after undergoing kidney surgery there for the removal of stones.
“He was uncomfortable with so many people coming. It’ll be quieter now,” Rodrigues said. He told Globoesporte.com: “It will take between eight and 10 days before he can leave the hospital.” The Brazilian website UOL quoted medical sources stating that the urinary infection was a normal development following the kidney surgery.
A hospital spokeswoman declined to elaborate on Pele’s condition, but said he was not in intensive care. News of Pelé’s medical troubles have worried fans in Brazil and abroad. In recent months the former player has reduced his number of personal appearances, although his absence from the World Cup was more related to his difficult relationship with the Brazilian FA.
However there are rising fears for the health of a player who became a global icon after first helping Brazil win the 1958 World Cup in Sweden aged just 17. Pelé previously underwent surgery in November 2012, having a hip replacement at a time when he was struggling to cope with life on the road.
Pelé was also part of the side which retained the trophy four years later in Chile, and then the team who have often been thought of as the greatest ever, in 1970, who completed a hat-trick of World Cup triumphs for Brazil in Mexico. Journalists doorstepping Pelé in January, when he attended the Ballon d’Or ceremony, were taken aback by how frail he looked. It was particularly striking given that Pelé has always looked far younger than his age.
Pelé won three World Cups as a player – in 1958, 1962 and 1970 – over a 14-year international career and was a joint winner, with Argentina’s Diego Maradona, of Fifa’s award for the player of the 20th century. He is not, though, universally loved in Brazil. His outspokenness often landed him in trouble and open criticism of fellow footballers irked colleagues enough for the 1994 World Cup winner Romário to say that “Pelé is a poet when he is quiet”.
There was little sympathy either for his perceived drive for business deals and commercial endorsements that reached the peak of ludicrousness when he advertised erectile dysfunction medicine.
More recently, Pelé’s perceived dismissal of the anti-World Cup protests that shook Brazil in 2013 also generated outrage.
Nonetheless, the honorary Ballon D’Or received by “the King” this year in Zurich was celebrated by the Brazilian media.