This queue was attractive. It was a manifestation of the legacy of joy in the sport Pele made

A number of months ago, it felt as if most of Britain was lining up patiently on the streets of London to pay tribute to the Queen.

On Monday, at the finish of a few days of condition mourning for Pele, the male enshrined for several of us as the greatest footballer there has at any time been, Brazil turned its eyes to Vila Belmiro, a stadium in the port city of Santos, and shaped its individual edition of the Queue to fork out tribute to its King.

This queue was a attractive point. It was a football queue. It was a manifestation of the legacy of joy in the match that Pele made. Persons experienced arrive to mourn him and to attend what experienced been styled as a community wake for him forward of his funeral on Tuesday, wherever a cortege will wind as a result of the streets and past his mother’s dwelling in advance of a private, loved ones ceremony, but it felt as if they experienced appear to celebrate every thing that football means to them, as well.

It felt as if the tens of hundreds who congregated listed here experienced arrive to celebrate the pleasure that Pele brought to us all. They experienced arrive to celebrate the communality of soccer, its brotherhood and its sisterhood, mainly because this was a queue in which mothers held single white roses and fathers wept openly when they passed Pele’s casket and sons scrunched their shirts about their faces to try to conceal their tears and daughters bowed their heads.

This was a queue where by folks wore the excellent yellow shirts of the Brazil nationwide crew, the shirt which, for several of us, epitomises ‘the wonderful game’ and instantly evokes a thousand reminiscences of Pele at the 1970 Entire world Cup, which was the most fantastic flowering of his genius. This was a queue in which some wore shirts that simply bore the names of the group of 1958, which won the Entire world Cup for Brazil for the very first time. Pele was 17 when he lit up that tournament.

This was a football queue so individuals wept but folks sang, also. ‘Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole,’ they chanted as they bought nearer to Vila Belmiro, ‘Pele, Pele’. Lots of wore the black and white shirts of Santos. Some wore bikinis in Brazilian green and gold. Some gentlemen came shirtless, their tops tucked in their trousers. All alongside the route of the queue, tributes to the only male to get 3 Planet Cups hung from structures and doorways. ‘Obrigado, Rei,’ quite a few of them explained. ‘Thank you, King.’

The queue snaked a couple of blocks from the stadium, previous open-air neighbourhood bars exactly where old adult men lounged on barstools sipping afternoon beers in the warmth, with one particular eye on the tv display screen that was showing admirers submitting earlier Pele’s coffin, and an additional eye on the pool desk in entrance of them.

Road sellers did a brisk trade in bottled water. Beside the dank, shallow canal that ran down the centre of the main highway exterior the stadium, additional vendors hung up banks and financial institutions of those yellow Brazil shirts with a new concept printed on them. ‘Pele: Eterno,’ it reported.

Pele’s coffin had been brought to Santos – where by his genius was 1st announced to the planet in 1956, in which he performed for 18 a long time and wherever he scored far more than 1,000 goals for the club by yourself – in the middle of the evening, greeted by fans at the roadside keeping flares aloft and by soaring, exploding fireworks, as it created the journey from the Albert Einstein Israelite Medical center in Sao Paulo exactly where he died very last 7 days at the age of 82.

It was a tiny right after 9.30am when the coffin was carried down the touchline at Vila Belmiro by guys putting on Santos tracksuits, and lifted very carefully on to a plinth in the centre circle in a significant, open-sided marquee total of wonderful flowers and rows of chairs. This was Pele’s last journey on this turf in which when he danced earlier defenders and scored at will. The lid was lifted off the coffin and a slim, wispy veil positioned diligently and lovingly in excess of Pele’s encounter prior to the to start with supporters in the crowd, which was being corralled in the avenue outdoors, have been allowed to file in.

The stadium experienced been turned into a shrine to Pele. ‘Viva o Rei’, a single indication in the stands mentioned. The accent over the ‘e’ in ‘Rei’ had been turned into a crown. ‘O Unico a Parar Una Guerra,’ a further banner read, ‘the only one particular to quit a war’, referring to the time that Pele’s arrival to perform a match with Santos in Nigeria had prompted a ceasefire in a civil war that was raging there. The scoreboards at each and every conclusion of the stadium showed a electronic impression of a golden crown following to the Santos badge.

At the other finish of the arena, overlooking the pitch wherever he experienced introduced so substantially pleasure to so numerous for so long, yet another sign hung limply in the sultry morning heat. It built reference to younger blood and Pele currently being eternal and then it stated simply just: ‘Voce e Rei.’ ‘You are King’. When the fans ended up permitted into the stadium, it was the initial point they passed as they produced their way toward Pele’s open coffin.

Outside the house, the group swelled and dignitaries began to get there. Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, past viewed cosying up to despots in Doha, was a single of the first to spend his respects. He announced although he was there that FIFA are to question all 211 confederations to name a stadium just after Pele.

The crowd outside the house retained growing. Some puzzled if potentially numbers had been influenced by the actuality that Brazilians expended much of the prior working day observing Lula staying sworn in as president for a third expression right after his slender defeat of his far-ideal predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, in previous month’s elections. Tv news below has been break up involving that, coverage of Pele’s dying and protection of the loss of life of previous Pope Benedict XVI.

Just one of the initially mourners who built his way into the stadium was an outdated guy who held a plastic reproduction of the Globe Cup on prime of his head with one particular hand and carried a sign with a extensive message on it in the other. He was eager to keep up the indicator for the hundreds of photographers and reporters and news crews, who had assembled in a single stand at Vila Belmiro, to study.

‘We lost Pele,’ the indicator reported, ‘but his legacy will in no way be overlooked by the Brazilian people. And he will normally be everlasting. Pele will often be the greatest of the entire world. And he shall under no circumstances be overlooked.’

The outpouring of love for Pele appears to have been almost common here. Present-day players this sort of as Neymar, a different former Santos player, have been steadfast in their assistance and praise for Pele and effusive about the influence he experienced on them and on Brazilian football in the class of a vocation when he won the Environment Cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970, scored a document 77 ambitions for his country, and went on to turn out to be the closest matter soccer has experienced to the world’s ambassador for the game.

The closest person Pele experienced to a non secular heir in Brazilian football was Zico, who was the star of the 1982 group who unfold so much joy in a new generation of supporters and did their very best to emulate the expressive, inventive, joyful soccer of the 1970 group. So it felt apposite to speak to him about what Pele intended to the state.

‘Every player who comes into the Brazilian nationwide team does it with a enormous sense of duty,’ Zico informed me at his soccer school in Rio de Janeiro just lately. ‘Pele took this responsibility amazingly critically and it could be mirrored by how he helped Brazil to be recognised all over the earth.

‘Pele was very important to our countrywide identification. He was an ambassador for us. I know in England that in some cases you say the similar thing about Bobby Charlton but it is really not very the similar. Confident, in some cases persons may possibly say “ah, Bobby Charlton,” if you say you are from England but there are other points they could consider of, too.

‘You have the Queen, for instance. Brazil has a president and it may be that international leaders could confuse him with other international leaders but no one would confuse Pele with coming from any where else. Pele was Brazil and Brazil was Pele.’

That is what the folks who queued up in the warmth in the streets around Vila Belmiro had been ready to pay back tribute to on Monday. They had been paying out tribute not just to the finest soccer participant there has at any time been but to an individual who turned the country’s cultural icon, an individual whose joy in the video game manufactured men and women associate Brazil with natural beauty and contentment and achievement, far too.

Possibly there was a higher outpouring of grief when the terrific Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna was killed at Imola in Might 1994 than there was listed here when Pele died but that is partly due to the fact Senna was nonetheless a younger guy when he passed and Pele had been previous and frail for some time. Senna was James Dean, permanently younger, whilst Pele had not kicked a football in a critical match for nearly half a century.

Despite that, his legend has endured. And even as the environment has acclaimed Lionel Messi for the crowning glory of profitable the Earth Cup in Qatar with Argentina final month, so Pele’s demise has reminded us all that he gained the trophy three periods.

That is why persons queued up in the heat on Monday, much too. That is why that old guy carried the plastic duplicate Globe Cup on his head. That is why I queued up for two hours on Monday to fork out my respects. That is why when the people today submitted earlier his open casket and turned to look at Pele, his confront covered with a sensitive, transparent veil, several turned their heads away, unable to comprehend that their King was dead.