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    Pele’s 24-Hour Funeral Attracted More Than 200,000 Mourners

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    SANTOS, Brazil — The city, it appeared, was asleep. The streets were empty, the shops were closed and a dog howled in the distance. Then, a few blocks from the soccer stadium that put this port city on the map, there were signs of life. Lots of it.Popcorn vendors. Men grilling meat. A group hawking T-shirts. And a hair salon charging for its bathroom.It was 3 a.m., and thousands of people were queued in an orderly line stretching around two-thirds of a mile, waiting to see the body of one of history’s most magnificent athletes in its final moments before entombment. The soccer star Pelé’s 24-hour wake was in its 17th hour, and by the looks of the crowd, one day might not have been enough. The Santos soccer club estimated that 230,000 mourners had been through the stadium.“This is no sacrifice,” said Walter Henrique, 35, a tax analyst who traveled three hours to the wake and had to be at work in five hours, yet had another few hours before he would be through the line. “He gave us so much joy that it’s a pleasure to be here.”The predawn crowd in Santos had different reasons for arriving at such an hour. Mourners had clogged the roads from São Paulo, ensnaring many people in traffic. Some had gotten off work late, or they wanted to avoid the midday sun. And still others had believed that if they came while the city was sleeping, they would avoid the line.The Santos soccer club estimated that 230,000 mourners attended the 24-hour event.“It was not a good strategy,” said Vinícius Fortes, 58, a software engineer who arrived with his family at 1:15 a.m. local time and found a much longer queue than expected. “I was voting to not stay. I said, ‘Look, we’re going to wait for two hours to be near a box for 10 seconds.’”He was outvoted. Now his family had waited two hours, and it appeared they had another hour to go. “But every day you go home and sleep,” Fortes added. “This is a moment in your life you are going to remember forever.”Fortes’s 27-year-old son, Guilherme, was the only one who had to work in the morning, but he appeared unfazed, even when they read on the news that the line had been paused for 30 minutes because officials were changing the flowers. “I’ve made worse decisions in my life,” he said.The mood not exactly somber, but the crowd was sober. One street vendor, Ednalva Cruz da Silva, had a pile of booze on ice, including cans of Brahma beer and a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky, but no one was partaking. Instead, she was selling waters and soda. “Usually it’s about 100 beers to every water,” she said. “That’s not the idea tonight.”Still, the line got a little louder as the stadium approached. One group in particular was leading the way with chants for the Santos soccer team — which included references to the time in 1967 when Pelé’s presence prompted a cease-fire in a civil war in Nigeria.The group had become something of an attraction at an event where everyone was looking for a distraction. The nine men had met in line, bonding over the previous three hours: a police officer, a supermarket clerk, three high schoolers, two chefs, a Rastafarian carpenter with a soccer ball and the owner of an industrial-automation company in an ankle-length robe and head scarf. He had worn the outfit to the World Cup in Qatar, but had sewn on a Santos patch hours earlier, and now had been posing for photos for hours.“I came alone because I’m the only Santos fan in my family,” said Pedro Camargo de Souza. “They thought I was crazy but what were they going to do?”“Pelé was the king,” said João de Souza. “He showed the Brazilian spirit to the whole world, showed that Brazil has guts.”“Pelé was the king,” said João de Souza, 58, the entrepreneur in the head scarf, wearing sunglasses at 3:30 a.m. “He showed the Brazilian spirit to the whole world, showed that Brazil has guts.”Pedro Camargo de Souza, 17, a high school junior in the group, said he had taken public transportation for three hours to arrive. “I came alone because I’m the only Santos fan in my family,” he said. “They thought I was crazy but what were they going to do?”As they neared the entrance, stadium employees ordered the group in a single-file line and ushered them along. “Good evening,” one usher said. “Or good morning.”At 3:40 a.m., they walked through the gate and onto the field. Silence fell over the crew. There was just the faint sound of Pelé singing a samba tune, “My Legacy,” a track that he released in 2006 and that played on repeat at the stadium as he lay in state.Many of the men held their phones aloft, filming the flowers; the banner that said, “Long live the king”; and the Jumbotron with an image of a crown.Then, just as they approached Pelé’s body at midfield — lying in a dark coffin, covered in flowers and draped in a veil — the silence erupted in a roar of more than 100 men. It was one of the Santos fan clubs, shouting a team chant, waving four enormous flags and lighting a flare in a before-dawn tribute alongside Pelé’s coffin.The nine men looked on in awe, but the line kept moving. Within three minutes, the group was back outside. “I cried,” said Camargo, the high schooler. “I would do it 10 more times, a thousand. I would do it as many times as Pelé scored.”They convened again next to a van selling grilled sandwiches. They exchanged contacts and recapped the moment. Some were headed home. Others would stay on the street or sleep in their car ahead of the funeral procession through the streets later that day, ending at the cemetery where Pelé’s coffin would be inserted into an aboveground tomb.“Now he rests in peace,” João de Souza said. “But his legacy, his reign, will be eternal.”Henrique Pontes, Gabriela Cortivo and Loara Cortivo rested outside the stadium after having attended Pelé’s 24-hour wake. More

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      Pelé Honored by Thousands of Brazilians at 24-Hour Funeral

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      Thousands of Brazilians came out to pay their respects to an athlete that put their nation on the world stage.At 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day, Antônio da Paz boarded a bus for the funeral of the soccer icon Pelé and rode the four hours to Santos, Brazil, where his idol was set to lie in state.When he arrived, he was a full day early — and the first in line. He had no chair, no blanket, no pillow. Just a homemade crown, a plastic World Cup trophy and a Brazilian-flag jumpsuit.“I slept with just my shirt and a hat so it wouldn’t hurt my head,” da Paz said Sunday, recalling his night on the concrete. “But it was worth it because he’s the king. A man who brought Brazil to the world — through him, through the ball.”The love, the adoration and the reverence for the man that Brazilians and many others call the king of soccer was on full display Monday in Santos, a port city that Pelé put on the map as the electrifying star of its soccer club for 18 years.Thousands of fans waited for hours outside to pay homage to Pelé.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesSantos opened the doors to its 16,000-seat stadium at 10 a.m. Monday, and a steady stream of fans began filing past Pelé’s body, which is lying in a dark coffin at midfield, covered in flowers and draped in a veil. The stands around him were draped with banners of his likeness and a message: “Viva o rei,” or “Long live the king.”Outside the stadium, fans from across Brazil and beyond had lined up to pay their respects, with the line taking nearly two hours to reach the stadium by late morning. There were fathers with daughters, mothers with sons and vendors selling beer, fried snacks and roses in the shade of the colonial architecture. One man hurriedly handed out pizzeria menus to anyone who would accept one. The conversation everywhere was about one thing. “Above him, only God,” one man said to another while passing by.“The atmosphere here is a bit of sadness and a bit of joy — sadness because he died and joy because of the people who saw him play and are talking about his history,” said Marcelo Alves da Silva, 41, a risk-investment analyst who attended the event with his 4-year-old son, Mathias, on his shoulders. Da Silva had taken the day off, and he drove the two hours from São Paulo. “It was important to show my son,” he said.Renato Sousa do Santo, Rafael Sousa do Santo, Antônio da Paz and Marcolino Olímpio de Oliveira were together in line. The men had previously met when Pelé was hospitalized.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesFans were allowed to walk by Pelé’s coffin in the stadium in which he starred for Santos in his brilliant 18-year career there.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesBut not everyone was prepared to enter. Onofra Rovai, 91, has lived across from the entrance to the stadium for 50 years and said she had met Pelé various times over the years. From her second-floor perch on Monday, Rovai, a retired sewing teacher, watched the crowd snake into the stadium, but she said she would not be joining it. “I want to remember him alive, as he was before,” she said, dressed in a Santos jersey. “For me, he didn’t die.”Back toward the end of the line, da Paz was returning from a lunch of rice and beans — he hardly ate during his 24 hours in line — and was now on his way to get back in the queue.Then someone approached and slapped him on the back. It was Renato Sousa do Santo, a 68-year-old driver who met da Paz when they both began waiting outside Pelé’s hospital in São Paulo last week when news emerged that he was nearing death. They had hoped to enter to perhaps meet the soccer star, but instead they were stuck outside and started a friendship on the sidewalk.“They wouldn’t let us enter, so we just stood there, just like we are here,” Sousa said. “We put signs up on the wall, and all the reporters would come and talk to us.”Pelé’s coffin was open for mourners under the shade of a tent on the stadium’s field.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesThen another voice shouted from the distance: “What’s up, gentlemen? Didn’t I say I would be here?”It was Marcolino Olímpio de Oliveira, 62, a painter from the São Paulo suburbs. He had also met da Paz and Sousa outside Pelé’s hospital, part of a small group that gathered in the final days of the star’s life. Now they were together again at his funeral.“Pelé was everything,” Olímpio said, carrying a large book about Pelé. “Everything he did, he did well, from playing, singing, acting.” He said he watched one of Pelé’s films recently. “I cried twice,” he said.The men got in line together. Two hours later, they were passing by Pelé’s coffin. As he walked across the field, da Paz shouted and held aloft a homemade sign that said, “Brazil lost the king, but your work will not be forgotten by the Brazilian people.”After he exited the stadium for the second time, da Paz’s plan was clear: “I come straight out and back in again.”Many fans of Pelé brought their families to the funeral to honor the national hero.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesPhotos of Pelé were everywhere at the stadium.Dado Galdieri for The New York Times More

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      Tributes Pour In as Brazil Prepares to Bid Pelé Farewell

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      Pelé’s body will lie at midfield at the Estádio Urbano Caldeira, his former club’s stadium, for 24 hours.SANTOS, Brazil — A day after Pelé’s death, fans of Brazil’s greatest soccer star took to the streets to mourn their hero and celebrate the man they called “The King of Football.”On Monday, a wake will be held at the Estádio Urbano Caldeira, known popularly as Vila Belmiro, in Santos, where Pelé shot to stardom and spent almost his entire career. His body will remain at midfield for 24 hours, until Tuesday morning, to allow what is expected to be a throng of mourners to pass by.The coffin will then be taken through the streets of Santos to the Ecumenical Necropolis Memorial for a private interment.Before the official farewell, grief-stricken fans were quick to gather at soccer’s major landmarks in Santos, a Brazilian port city of 430,000, to pay homage to Pelé, who was declared a national treasure and rose to a level of global stardom that few athletes have known.Across the street from the stadium, Eva de Souza Nunes, an 84-year-old retired nurse, hung two oversize flags bearing the Santos F.C.’s crest from her balcony. “I’m in mourning today,” she said. “And it’s not just me — Brazil is in mourning, the whole world is in mourning.”Eva de Souza Nunes hung flags on her balcony in honor of Pelé and his Santos club.Lalo de Almeida for The New York TimesFondly, she remembered Pelé visiting her home; her husband, José, used to fix the soccer legend’s television, she said. “He wasn’t my family, but at the same time, it felt like he was.”Across town, fans flocked to a bronze statue depicting Pelé’s famous “air punch” goal celebration, laying flowers and snapping selfies. Rafael Barbosa, a 32-year-old bar owner, and his daughter Livia, 10, drew close to the statue for a picture, lifting their fists and striking the iconic pose.“Pelé is our king,” said Barbosa, who had traveled more than 300 miles from the city of Paraguaçu Paulista to pay his respects. “He’s history. He lives on in our memories, in the memories of our grandparents.”“Before Pelé, football was just football,” his cousin André Barbosa, a 23-year-old agricultural engineer, chimed in. “After ‘The King,’ football became this incredible spectacle.”Pelé’s impressive athleticism and unrivaled creativity on the field have become the stuff of legend, leaving a lasting mark even on those who never witnessed his mastery of the sport.“I never saw him play,” said Thiago do Santos, a 37-year-old real estate agent, as he took a selfie with his two dogs in front of the statue. “But I was in the crowd outside the stadium when he came out after a ceremony one time. And he hugged me. The King hugged me! I’ll never forget it.”Vilma Mattos de Lima, a 69-year-old special-education teacher, donned a white Santos F.C. jersey signed by Pelé and laid a hand on the statue with reverence. She had never missed a game, she said as she clutched a pair of old photos of herself next to her idol.“I was 10 years old when I saw him play for the first time. And I was enchanted from that moment,” she said. “Losing him is heartbreaking.”Vilma Mattos de Lima showed a photograph of her meeting Pelé.Lalo de Almeida for The New York TimesAt a Santos-themed bar, lifelong fans reminisced about Pelé’s masterly passes and dazzling goals, which popularized Brazilian soccer around the world and ushered in a new form of the sport that he called “the beautiful game.”“What I liked was that, every game, he did something new,” said Carlos Eduardo Fernandes, 69, the owner of the bar, which is adorned with faded images of Pelé. “We were dying to see what wild play he had come up with.”But Pelé’s reach went far beyond the field. In a deeply unequal Brazil, his meteoric rise from poverty to global stardom made him a national symbol, beloved by the country’s poor and marginalized.“What made Pelé so popular was his simplicity,” said Sérgio Luiz Alonso, 61, a retired oil rig worker. “He came from humble beginnings. He was just like us, like the people.”As a child, Alonso waited outside the Santos training center for Pelé to come out after practice. “He would sign autographs for us; he never turned us away,” he remembered.Condolences and reminiscences for the most famous soccer player in history also poured in from politicians, athletes and artists at home and abroad.“I had the privilege that the younger Brazilians did not have: I saw Pelé play live at Pacaembu and Morumbi,” said Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s incoming president, referring to two stadiums in São Paulo. “Not merely play. I saw Pelé presenting a master class. When he got the ball, he always did something special, often ending in a goal.”“Pelé changed everything,” said Neymar, the Brazilian superstar. “He turned football into art, into entertainment. He gave a voice to the poor, to Black people and, above all, he gave visibility to Brazil. Football and Brazil raised their status, thanks to the king. He is gone, but his magic will remain. Pelé is eternal.”“He will be immortalized in every magnificent goal, in every moment of genius, but mainly in each one of us who were inspired by him and his generation,” said Cafu, the former Brazilian great.A fan outside the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in São Paulo with a banner honoring Pelé as the eternal king.Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times“By your feet we were and will continue to be blessed by your art,” said Marta, one of the best women’s players ever. “I love you, king.”“Michael Jordan was the Pelé of basketball,” said Antonio Tabet, a Brazilian comedian. “Muhammad Ali was the Pelé of boxing. Michael Phelps was the Pelé of swimming. Roger Federer was the Pelé of tennis. Pelé was Pelé. Eternal, unrestricted and an adjective.”Leonardo Coelho More