IP AGENCY.
Thousands of people began to parade this morning through the Santos club stadium, at the start of the 24-hour open-air wake that takes place on the playing field to bid farewell to the remains of soccer star Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pelé , passed away last Thursday at the age of 82, a victim of colon cancer.
In a silent line, thousands of people who waited for four hours for the gates to open, entered to say their last goodbye to “O Rei”, among them the president of FIFA, the Swiss Gianni Infantino, and the head of Conmebol , the Paraguayan Alejandro Domínguez.
The remains of Pelé, whose body underwent an embalming process called taxopraxia. they were placed under a store in the center of the Santos field, the club where he played from 1956 to 1974, winning two Libertadores and two Intercontinental Cups.
“It is a great tragedy to have lost the King of Soccer. As a Santos fan, I value him a lot because he stayed to play in our country, in our club, making Brazil known. If you see the videos on social networks, all the known football plays were invented or made before by Pelé,” Gabriel Monteiro, 16, told Télam.
Monteiro and his friends, who come from the slums of the seaside resort of Santos, where Latin America’s main port is located, told how their grandparents played with Pelé on the beach and in the pastures and met the star in bars and bakeries in the area, after training.
Pelé’s coffin arrived in the morning from the Albert Einstein hospital in São Paulo, 70 kilometers away, where he died after a month in hospital, and was carried to the center of the playing field by his son Edinho, a former goalkeeper who had judicial problems for drugs and that he is the coach of Londrina, of the promotion, and by the ex-World Cup footballer Zé Roberto, ex-Santos, ex-Palmeiras and Bayern Munich.
The governor of São Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, led the delegation in which Infantino participated and which began Pelé’s honorary funerals. Pelé’s widow and his third wife, Marcia Aoki, was also present at the start of the funeral.
Families from various cities have spent 4 hours waiting to enter the gates of the Urbano Caldeira stadium in the Vila Belmiro neighborhood.
“We came from São Paulo very early, Pelé is like he reinvented soccer, he created all the passion for soccer, he is the only one who won three World Cups, the greatest in the world,” said Alexia Souza, a teacher who was with her children, one of them with the shirt of the Brazilian team with the 10 of Neymar, another idol that emerged in Santos.
It is unknown about the attendance of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who today had a busy agenda at the Foreign Ministry receiving about twenty foreign leaders in bilateral meetings. For this reason, it is speculated that he could travel at night or on Tuesday morning.
At least sixty giant flower crowns were placed in a sector of the stands. Street vendors offer T-shirts with the classic 10 canarinha with the phrase Pelé Eterno, for $12.
In the stands, in black and white, the colors of the “Peixe”, as Santos is known, giant flags of the fans recall the greatest star. The largest flag has the great farewell phrase: “Long live the King.”
The first fans to pay tribute to the star, who formed long lines from the hours before the start of the funeral, entered through one of the stalls of the field and circulated through the corridors formed by fences, near the coffin located inside a tent in the center of the playing field.
Behind her were all the floral motifs sent by different personalities to honor the best Brazilian soccer player in history.
The stands of the field were covered with large flags with different messages: “Long live the King”, “Pelé 82 years old”, “Santos Shirt 10” and “The only one who stops a war”, in relation to the truce originated in a civil conflict in Nigeria over his visit in 1969.
Pelé is veiled at the club where he developed almost his entire career (1956-1974) before retiring in the United States (1975-1980).
With Santos, “O Rei” won more than 20 titles, including the 1962 and 1963 Copa Libertadores and Intercontinental.
The Brazilian star died last Thursday at the age of 82 at the Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo, where he remained in palliative care after an extensive fight against colon cancer.
