preg_replace - What is wrong here?

[Francisco - São Paulo - Brazil <avs1001@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Suppose I have this:

$words = array('piece','people');
$profile_text = "I would like to meet people to help me to work in the 
world piece project.";

$marked = MarkWords($profile_text, $words);

Should return the same sentece but with the 2 words replaced with the 
<span> tag, am I wrong?

function MarkWords($profile_text, $words){
    for($i=0; $i<count($words); $i++){
        $patern[$i] = "/@".$words[$i]."/";
        $replace[$i] = "<span 
style='color:white'>".$words[$i]."</span>";   
    }
   // print_r($patern);
   // print_r($replace);
   
    $pro = preg_replace($patern, $replace, $profile_text);           
    return $pro;
}



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