Today (2/1) begins the first 24-hour public vigil at the Santos stadium for the soccer giant, Pele. Brazilians are saying goodbye this week to a legend, who passed away at the age of 82 after a battle with cancer.
The doors of the stadium, with a capacity of 16,000 people, are expected to open at 10:00 am. local time.
The casket with his body will be displayed in the center of the stadium.
Three giant flags have been placed in the stands and read: “Long live the king” and “Pele 82 years”.
The public will be allowed to enter the stadium until 10:00 am. on Tuesday.
There will then be a procession through the streets of the port city, which is about 75 kilometers from the state capitalSão Paulo.
The procession will pass the house of Pele's mother, SElest Arantes,age 100, who does not know that her son has died, as she has serious health problems and is reportedly out of touch with the environment.
The procession will end at a cemetery in Santos, where Pele will be buried in a special mausoleum.
The “king” of football
Pele “passed away”, on Thursday, December 29, at the age of 82 after fighting for more than a year withColon cancer. Throughout his life he had fallen and stood up in battles harder than those on the courts, battles of life, waving his hand vigorously in the air as he was wont to do.
The born on October 23 of 1940 legend of Brazilian and world football has recently been hospitalized in a hospital of his hometown with cancer having “defeated“.
Before was createdthe legend, Pele was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento. The legend, the “black pearl” (Perola negra) of world football, was born on October 23, 1940, in the city of Tres Corasos (in Greek it means three hearts) in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. He was the first child of the family's threeand was christened Edison in honor of the inventor Thomas Edison (he went to his hometown shortly before Pele's birth) and then the “i” was removed from the name.
In recent years he has had health problems. He was fighting, while he entered the hospital -again- on November 29, with a respiratory infection, but also for the doctors to review the treatmentof colon cancer, and having completed the last round of treatment at the end of April. Pele underwent surgery to remove a tumor in September 2021.
However, his public appearances had already decreased before the Covid-19 pandemic and since then has made few exits from his home near Santos.
When he became “king”
What if the name Peleis known around the world, he had stated that he did not know how the nickname came about and also that he did not like it, noting that it did not signify anything in the Portuguese language (“My name is Edson, then they started calling me Pele” /strong>. I didn't like it. I admired Thomas Edison, he's important!”). When much later a theologian told him that this word exists in the Bible and in Hebrew it means miracle, he changed his opinion. To this day there are two versions of how it came about. The first mentions that one day he was playing soccer, in the fields of Tres Corasos with his friends, with an improvised ball made of cloth and paper, at one point he found an old, deflated one thrown near a train station , damaged, but leather ball. So does pele which means skin in many Latin languages. The other version is that the name came when he mistakenly called his favorite player “Bile”, Vasco da Gama's goalkeeper.
As for the “king”, it is a title given to him by play by Nelson Rodriguez when he was just 17 years old.
