The death of Pelé, O Rei, the most eternal and international of Brazilian idols, has left his compatriots dejected this Thursday and plunged into nostalgia for the times when Brazil was synonymous with triumph. Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the perfect soccer player with worldwide fame, has died at the age of 82 at the Albert Einstein Hospital in São Paulo where he had been hospitalized for a month due to complications from colon cancer. There he spent last Christmas with his wife and surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
The news, as feared as expected during this agonizing end of the footballer, arrived shortly before four in the afternoon local time. His eldest daughter, Kely Nascimento, the one in charge in recent weeks of reporting on Pelé’s evolution, has announced it with a delicate message on Instagram. “Everything we are is thanks to you. We love you infinitely. Rest in peace, ”she says next to three hearts (this is the name of the city where the soccer player was born) and a photo of clasped hands.
Immediately, the front pages of the Brazilian newspapers have forgotten the news of the day —the new ministers who will accompany the future president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva starting Sunday— to pay tribute to the man who brought so much joy to Brazil, with his art and its three world cups. Pelé symbolized the promising and triumphant Brazil. The nickname of the man who played soccer in 66 countries became synonymous with excellence.
The wake will be on Monday at the headquarters of Santos, the club to which he was faithful practically all his life and which is located in the city of the same name, 70 kilometers from São Paulo. The public will be able to fire you for 24 hours. Later, the coffin will tour the coastal city and pass by the place where his mother lives, Celeste, who recently turned 100 years old. He will be buried in a cemetery overlooking the Vila Belmiro stadium, where he made his debut as a teenager and said goodbye to Brazilian soccer after 19 seasons.
“Before Pelé, 10 was just a number,” Neymar, the current 10 of the Brazilian team, recalled on Instagram. A number that Pelé took to the top. No one but him treasures three World Cups, nor has any country except Brazil won five World Cups. He also recalled that Pelé turned football into art, into entertainment and maintains that he “gave a voice to the poor, to blacks and mainly, gave visibility to Brazil.”
With the 10 behind him, the Argentine Messi conquered the World Cup in Qatar with his teammates just a few days ago, which Pelé followed on television from bed, as his family told. “Rest in peace”, the head of the albiceleste has fired him along with a photo of both. La Canarinha aspired to give him the sixth.
The Frenchman Mbappe, who had a great complicity with Pelé for a long time, has tweeted: “The king of football has left us but his legacy will never be forgotten.”
The Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo has written that “a mere goodbye to the eternal King Pelé will never be enough to express the pain that currently embraces the entire world of football. An inspiration for so many millions, a reference from yesterday, today, forever”.
The president of neighboring Argentina, Alberto Fernández, said goodbye to him with a diplomatic tweet: “One of the best footballers in history has left us,” he said in a wink to Maradona and the rest of his compatriots.
President Fernández or his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, have published messages in tribute to the Brazilian who turned soccer into a matter of planetary fame much faster than the outgoing president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. He, who practically withdrew from public life two months ago, after losing the elections, has expressed his condolences in an official note from the Government in which he stresses that “in addition to being a great athlete, he was a great citizen and patriot, raising the name of Brazil through which it passed”.
Lula, the president-elect, has recalled on Twitter that he knows first-hand the magic of the king. “I had the privilege that the younger Brazilians did not have, I saw Pelé play live. I saw him put on the show. Because when he grabbed the ball he always did something special and often ended in a goal”. After admitting that Pelé’s Santos massacred the Corinthians of his loves, he affirms that now “he will be in heaven with eternal stars like Coutinho, Didi, Garrincha, Nilton Santos, Sócrates, Maradona… He left a certainty: there had never been a 10 As the”.
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