‘It’s going to be crazy’: Crowds flock to Santos ahead of Pelé’s funeral

Under the sweltering sun of a Brazilian summer, Santos residents and visitors to the city were flocking in two directions on Sunday. Many headed south to the city’s renowned beach. Many others headed north, wearing Brazil or Santos FC football shirts, to pay tribute to Pelé.

The final preparations were underway for the huge memorial ceremony for Pelé at the Vila Belmiro stadium, after his remains have been transferred from the Albert-Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo. Santos FC employees were busy setting up miles of fencing to accommodate the vast crowds who would come to pay their last respects to their hero. Further along, groups of supporters were spreading out tarpaulin in the 16,000-seater stadium.

“It’s going to be crazy,” one local journalists said. “There’s never going to be enough room for everyone.”

Some people made just a brief visit to the stadium to take a quick selfie amid preparations for the grand event. But many lingered and were keen to talk about the importance of Pelé in their lives and the life of their country.

‘Feeling of unity’

Young couple Ruan and Gabriela had travelled down from Sao Paulo to pay their respects. “We’re here because this is a historic moment,” said Ruan, a 28-year-old designer. “Pelé was a legend; he transcended football and left a mark wherever he went.

“I became a Santos fan because my granddad was a huge fan of Pelé – and I think all fathers and grandfathers who saw the king play passed their sentiments on to the next generations. The legend of Pelé will go on,” Ruan concluded.

>> In pictures: A look back at Pelé’s extraordinary career

“I’ve been thinking a lot about why so many of us have come here, and the way I see it, it’s all about the feeling of unity that football brings,” added Gabriela, a corporate journalist for a car company. “For me, football is all about a sense of connection with my family. It brings me closer to my family. Even if I’m not following football all the time, it’s a connection that brings us closer. Pelé made it possible for people to feel closer to each other despite supporting different teams and whatever other differences they may have had.”

Pelé wore the number 10 shirt for club and country throughout his long career, so a memorial has been set up at the stadium’s gate number 10 to reflect its symbolic importance, just next to a statue of Pelé there. People have laid flowers and wreaths there or just stood there to mourn the footballing icon.

Ana Varela has had a front-row seat for this momentous occasion. She lives right opposite the stadium in a red and blue house. Varela is the president and founder of the Torcida Seria Santista, Brazil’s first-ever association of female football fans. The 65-year-old only saw Pelé play once, back in the 1970s, but she reveres him above all other footballers.

“It was like he was friends with the ball,” she said. “The ball understood him and he understood the ball. “He was like a satellite navigation system; he always knew where he was, his teammates, the opposition and the ball. Above all, he made Santos FC and Brazil admired around the world.”

Wearing a Santos FC shirt to express her enthusiasm, Varela remembered above all Pelé the human being. “He was a great man. He was very charismatic but also charmed people with his simplicity. He would talk to everyone. He always took the time to do that. He gave people his attention. He’d sign all the autographs, take all the selfies. He was human; he didn’t act like a star. And it was all that that made Pelé what he was: the greatest of all time,” Varela said, moved by her memories of the man.

Santos FC in the blood

Alberto Francisco de Oliveira is a Santos FC superfan who runs the bar right next to the stadium. But nobody calls him by his real name; everybody uses his nickname, “the German”.

The bar is the biggest hangout for diehard Santos FC fans. The German has a Santos FC tattoo on his arm, with the dates of every championship victory they have won since he started supporting them. And he has a tattoo on his forehead, which came from a bet.

“In 2006, I promised the manager that if we won the championship that year, I’d get a tattoo in a place where no one else had one. Well, they did win, so I tattooed my head,” the German recounted. “But I’d definitely have ended up supporting another team if it weren’t for Pelé. He was something else. He was just incredible on the pitch – his dribbling, his shooting. No one could get to his feet. He did things with the ball that no one dared imagine.”

The German highlighted the colossal sense of grief in the neighbourhood. Famous for cutting Pelé’s hair, Didi closed his barbershop next to the stadium as soon as he heard the news. “It was such sad news to end the year on,” the German said. “It’s going to be a very difficult couple of days.”

“But even though [Pelé’s real name] Edson Arantes do Nacimento is gone, Pelé is immortal,” his neighbour said. Brazil might be a bitterly divided country politically, but “people united through him – you see all these people? They came just to say goodbye. I have no words.”

Putting Santos on the map

As well as uniting Brazil, Pelé did wonders for Santos. With him, the team from the small port city could suddenly compete with the big guns from Sao Paulo – Corinthians, Palmeiras and Sao Paulo FC. With him, the club won the Brazilian championship ten times, two Copa Libertadores titles and two Club World Cups, among other trophies.

So it is very apt that Pelé chose his adopted city for his final journey. He arrived at Santos aged just 15 and played there for 18 years from 1956 to 1974, scoring 1,091 goals in 1,116 games. Although his career ended with a brief spell playing for the New York Cosmos, he never really left Santos.

Pelé is omnipresent in the port city. There is a statue in the city centre, banners everywhere reading “Obrigado rey” (“Thank you, king”), huge frescoes bearing his image, and several buildings bearing his name, such as the Santos FC training ground.

The day after the memorial ceremony, Pelé’s coffin will travel through the city he loved so much on a procession  amid vast crowds. He will pass by his mother’s house; she is still alive, and will soon turn 100. The king of football will then be buried in Santos’s huge vertical cemetery, on the ninth floor of the family mausoleum. Overlooking the pitch where he performed many of his greatest feats.

This article was translated from the original in French.