Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The exlateral Claudio Ibraim Vaz Leal, ‘Branco’, champion with the Brazilian team in the 1994 World Cup USA, was transferred to an intensive care unit (ICU), where he is intubated after a deterioration in his clinical picture as a result of the COVID-19
The ex-soccer player, out 56 year he is admitted to the CopaStar Hospital in Rio de Janeiro since Tuesday with a painting “graveof lung infection due to the novel coronavirus, said the latest medical bulletin released this Friday.
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On Thursday, he suffered deterioration in his health and was transferred to an intensive care bed, where he is “sedated” and on “mechanical ventilation”.
Over the past 24 hours, it has evolved in a “steady way,” although there is still no prediction of when it will be able to breathe “on its own,” the medical team said in the note.
According to the ‘GloboEsporte’ portal, Branco is one of six infected who recently traveled with the Brazilian U18 team to the city of Recife, in the north-east of the country, for a series of training sessions and friendlies.
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Brazil is currently going through its worst phase of the pandemic, due in part to the circulation of more contagious variants of the coronavirus, and to date there have been nearly 11.8 million cases and nearly 290,000 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.
Branco, the current coordinator of the Brazilian team’s lower categories, was one of the foundational parts of the team that was named champion at the 1994 World Cup in the United States, led by coach Carlos Alberto Parreira and field-led by attacker Romario de Souza.
Four years earlier, at the World Cup in Italy, the left back played a controversial moment in the round of 16 against Argentina, which went down in history as the episode of ‘Agua Bendita’.
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The draw was decided in favor of the Albiceleste thanks to a goal from Claudio Cannigia, but it was not without controversy.
At the time, Branco denounced that he felt a series of dizziness after drinking from one of the cans of water offered to him by Argentinian physiotherapist Miguel di Lorenzo and suggested that they could have put some substance in the bottle.
The star of the Albiceleste team, the late Diego Armando Maradona, even joked about it, although coach Carlos Salvador Bilardo flatly denied it. EFE