Thousands of Brazilians, who are lined up for kilometers around the Santos stadium, where Edson Arantes do Nascimento Pele revealed himself to the world and developed most of his sports career, they are going to the Santos stadium this Monday to pay the last tribute to the king of football, who died last Thursday at the age of 82
the saints and the city’s mayor’s office have taken care of all the details of the farewell ceremony for Pelé, whose body was transferred at dawn from the Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo, where he died on December 29, to Vila Belmiro, a distance of 80 kilometers.
the body of Skin He arrived at the Santos stadium headquarters around 4 in the morning this Monday, escorted by the Fire Department and the Military Police, and the wake began at ten in the morning. The ceremony will continue until the early hours of this Tuesday, when the soccer star will be buried in a family ceremony.
Pelé’s widow, Marcia Aoki, arrived at the wake at the moment the coffin was placed on the Vila Belmiro lawn. She was visibly moved, she caressed the ex-soccer player’s face and hands in the presence of the ex-soccer player’s children and several relatives.
Numerous authorities are also attending Pelé’s wake, including the new governor of the state of Sao Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, and the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino. The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvawho assumed his third term on Sunday, is expected on Tuesday in Santos, before the closing of the wake.
Infantino has highlighted the importance of Pelé for the sport, already explained that he will ask all FIFA member countries to put Pelé’s name in at least one stadium as a tribute to one of the great legends in football history. “We will ask that all countries in the world have at least one stadium named after Pelé so that children know how important it was,” he assured.
Santos began preparing the farewell ceremony for Pelé shortly after confirming the seriousness of the ex-soccer player’s health. His stadium, which was one of Pelé’s favorites, was also the most emblematic place to say goodbye to him because it was there that he started playing, at the age of 15, and where he scored 288 goals.
Before being buried this Tuesday, the funeral procession with Pelé’s body will go through the streets of Santos and arrive at Channel 6, where his mother lives, Celeste Arantes, a hundred years old, before following the road to the Ecumenical Memorial Necropolis. The vertical cemetery, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest in the world, was chosen for his burial by Pelé himself, who bought a tomb 19 years ago on the ninth floor, overlooking the Santos stadium.
Pelé chose that place, where his father João Ramos do Nascimento is also buried, considering that it did not look like a cemetery, and that people would not feel sad.
