Brazil decrees three days of official mourning and will fire Pelé after the New Year

Brazilian Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known worldwide as

she dreamed of reaching a centennial like her grandmother, and like her mother, Celeste, who recently turned 100.

O Rei passed away on Thursday in São Paulo at the age of 82 due to multi-organ failure triggered by colon cancer.

Foresighted, beyond his wishes, the man who turned soccer into a spectacle for the masses carefully chose where he will be buried next Tuesday.

The niche is in a really special place.

Of course, in the city of Santos, and it also has views of Vila Belmiro, the Santos FC stadium where he was born as a professional player at the age of 15 and said goodbye to Brazilian soccer.

O Rei, whose farewell has taken front pages all over the planet, also stars in editorial senses throughout the Brazilian press.

Pelé's remains will rest over the weekend at the Einstein Hospital, where the king of soccer had been hospitalized for a month and was treated periodically for years.

Some fans came to pay tribute to him at the hospital, where he died on Thursday at 3:27 p.m.

São Paulo is deserted at the gates of the end of the year, whoever has been able to has traveled to the beach.

On Sunday morning, the coffin with his corpse will be transferred to Santos, 70 kilometers from São Paulo.

Starting at ten in the morning, the coffin, closed, will be exposed in the center of the field where O Rei still has a box.

Fans will be able to say goodbye for 24 hours.

That same enclosure houses one of the two museums that Pelé has in the city where he lived a good part of his life.

An infinity of photos, objects and documents, as well as the locker room where he lay down to meditate before jumping onto the field, are part of what can be seen.

The Government of Brazil has decreed three days of official mourning, in one of the last decisions signed by the far-right Jair Bolsonaro as president of the Republic.

It is extended to seven days both in the coastal Santos, full of tourists these days for the New Year, and in the rest of the State of São Paulo.

The wake has been organized by Pelé's family together with the club to which he dedicated his professional life, except for the final stretch in the United States with the New York Cosmos.

The preparations accelerated when, at the gates of Christmas, the doctors confirmed his aggravation.

He had stopped responding to treatment for the colon tumor and that affected his lungs and heart.

The VIla Belmiro stadium, of Santos FC, in the dark.

The lit video scoreboard shows a crown and the text 'Edson Arantes do Nascimento - 1940 - 2022'. AMANDA PEROBELLI (REUTERS)

The official farewell will be delayed until next week because the most international Brazilian has died on dates marked by the first New Year that will be celebrated without the restrictions of the pandemic and by a transfer of power in the federal government with unprecedented tension.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will become Brazil's president on Sunday, taking over from Bolsonaro, who has virtually disappeared from public life since his defeat.

Pelé was 62 years old when he bought the niche in which he will rest.

It was at the time when Brazil won its fifth World Cup, including those that made O Rei the only three-time champion on the planet.

He then spoke in an interview about the longevity of his elders and the end of his life, which he obviously saw as far away: “I am not afraid of death at all.

But it will take a long time to happen.

And there is something else: Pelé will not be buried.

He is immortal, eternal.

Edson will be buried."

He always insisted on the idea of ​​separating the star from the man since the time when he closed his professional career as a footballer and invented a new life dedicated to advertising and business.

His two personalities were separate matters, could not be measured by the same yardstick.

The Brazilian Vera Lucia Pereira Lima, a 79-year-old retired soccer player, says she is extremely saddened by the death of Pelé.

She, who also played with the 10, is the founder of Santa Cruz de Belo Horizonte, the club where the best Brazilian soccer player of all time, Marta, A Rainha (The Queen) debuted.

“Pele was the greatest player of all time.

Everything that all the

that we have in Brazil and abroad do, he already did long before ”, Lima explained on the phone from Belo Horizonte this Friday.

Lima complains that Marta does not receive tributes that match her honors.

Vila Belmiro, the Santos FC stadium, begins to prepare for the wake in the center of the pitch.Matias Delacroix (AP)

For his eternal rest, Arantes do Nascimento chose the highest vertical cemetery in the world, the Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica, a complex of buildings, the largest of which has 32 floors, where his brother Jair, or Coutinho, companion of the star, are buried. in front of the most glorious Santos, who passed away in 2019. Pelé chose a niche on the ninth floor, overlooking the field where he played for 19 seasons.

The ninth, in honor of the number with which his father played, the soccer player João Ramos,

Although no one under the age of 50 has had the privilege of watching him play live, every Brazilian treasures memories of Pelé.

During his last hospitalization and as his condition worsened, some reviewed his best goals on video.

Thousands of people honored him on networks.

The future Minister of Human Rights, the philosopher Silvio de Almeida, recalled in a tweet how transcendental Pelé's deeds were for him as a child and for millions of his compatriots: “Pelé was the first thing that made me like Brazil.

Seeing a black Brazilian man, like me, being indisputably the best at what he did made me believe that, despite everything, there was something to believe in.

He personified a dream.

Thank you, Pele, thank you, King!"

On Tuesday, after the wake in Vila Belmiro, the funeral procession will tour Santos.

And it will pass in front of the house where the centennial Doña Celeste still lives.

The feat of turning 100 years old slipped out of the hands of her son, who won three World Cups, scored 1,281 goals, and symbolized, along with

, a happy, promising and enormously talented Brazil.

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