In the cafeteria of the hotel, the film about the king, as he is called throughout Brazil, is shown all the time. Pele scores goals again, gives speeches, hugs celebrities and favela boys. Pelé stops the Biarfra war: when he arrives in Nigeria in 1969, the parties to the conflict give up to see him.

On the steps of the town hall, Pelé’s name is adorned with flowers. At the Pelé Museum, in front of his monuments and posters with his likeness, people take selfies – age and gender don’t matter. In museums you can see the king’s sportswear, photos, records of the goals he scored. A tour in his footsteps is to be created.

The grandparents talk about Pelem at the Padoca cafe, where he used to come for coffee (there’s a statue of him covered in flowers next to it). From the garden you can see the loft at the top of the skyscraper where he lived. He got rid of it when Neymar bought himself right next to the loft.

The elders are grateful to Pelé favelados in the Vila Pele estate. In the 1990s, Pelé paid the city for land illegally occupied by three hundred poor families, so that they could build real houses there, not those made of boards and corrugated iron – and not be afraid of eviction. . The king had compassion for such as he himself had been. And he had a royal gesture.

Cemetery with a view

The death of Pelé, born in 1940, the most famous footballer of the time when he ran in the fields, was a spectacle. A few months ago, in a Netflix film, he appeared in a wheelchair – he and a handful of his teammates remembered the good old days. During the last month of his life, when it was known that the end was near, news and words came from behind the walls of the São Paulo hospital, each of which could be the last. That he watches the World Cup matches and, of course, applauds canarinhos. And when the compatriots have abandoned the tournament – fingers crossed that Lionel Messi lifts the cup of the golden Nike.

Original Title: The King’s Farewell