Brazil bows to its King: today farewell to Pele

Brazil says goodbye to Pele . The people who loved him so much paid Santos their last farewell to their King, in the stadium where the legend was born, the Vila Belmiro , home of the team of a city on the Paulista coast that perhaps the greatest footballer in history made known to the world .

Under the Brazilian summer sun, with a temperature that fluctuated between 29 and 32 degrees, tens of thousands of people , not only from Santos but also from other cities, formed a kilometer-long queue to enter from the entrances n . 2 and 3 of the stadium, those reserved for the "torcida", the common people. No one complained or was tempted to leave, and there were people who had camped out since the night before just to be sure of getting in, almost all dressed in Seleçao or Santos shirts. Also in line was Nicanor Ribeiro, a Pelé impersonator who recounted, moved, how "my King whom I have met three times" helped him win the fight against alcoholism.

President Lula will also travel to Santos today, where the football king's coffin will be carried in procession through the city streets before burial in the vertical cemetery overlooking the stadium.

COLLECTIVE EMOTION – It was a wave of great collective emotion that swept across Brazil, and Fifa president Gianni Infantino , one of the first VIPs, also took part in it (he slightly preceded Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan) to arrive at the funeral wake on the Santos field, where the coffin with Pelé's body was carried by the employees and by his son Edinho, who now coaches Londrina in Serie B, and by Zé Roberto.

And Infantino himself launched a suggestive proposal from the stadium: "Like Fifa, now we will ask - he said - that all the countries of the world have a stadium named after Pele , so that even the children have an account of what he did for football".

Meanwhile, a minute's silence will be observed in memory of O Rei on the fields of all the national federations affiliated to the world one, including that of the Italian Serie A.

(Unioneonline/vl)