“Don’t come with training excuses. During the night, there was just no one who didn’t want to. This proves that the Brazilian player has no sense of class. Even the clubs let me down. They should have forced their players to attend, in the form of a delegation .”
The outrage would fit in January 2023. But it was observed 40 years ago. Defender Brito, holder of the Brazilian national team that won the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, complained about the omission of former and current national football idols at the wake of Mané Garrincha, who died in early 1983.
“Brazilian football, for its great idols, is setting a bad example for the world”, agreed defender Bellini, captain of the 1958 title.
A similar indignation took hold of fans and former athletes with the absence of important names in national football at Pelé’s funeral. Among the winners of the 1994 and 2002 Cups and the members of the squad that played in the tournament in Qatar two months ago, only Mauro Silva, winner in the United States, attended.
Pelé died last Thursday (29), due to kidney failure, heart failure, bronchopneumonia and colon adenocarcinoma. According to calculations by Santos Futebol Clube, more than 230,000 people attended the wake of the King of football, held on the lawn of Vila Belmiro.
Most of those absent, despite being sought for clarification, did not provide explanations. Ronaldo, Cafu, Roque Júnior and Bebeto, for example, said they couldn’t attend because they were out of Brazil.
Even from the professional squad of the Santos team, where Pelé played from 1956 to 1974, only ten attended: Alex, Ângelo, Ivonei, João Paulo, Maicon, Marcos Leonardo, Patati, Pirani, Soteldo and Zanocelo. The association’s website mentions 29 names in the professional squad.
Among the presidents of the main clubs in the country, only Julio Casares, from São Paulo, attended. Palmeiras sent a representative.
The greatest repercussions were caused by the disdain of former world champions and current national team players. Neymar’s eponymous father claimed that Paris Saint-Germain banned his son from attending.
“The absence of these people at Pelé’s wake says more about Brazilian football than about Pelé. Funerals are for the living, not for those who died. Their absence speaks about poverty, this smallness that football has become because of the athletes, the lack of culture. You have people who play and think little beyond their own navel. By not recognizing Pelé’s greatness, they show themselves small and incapable of placing themselves in the history of the sport”, criticizes Katia Rubio, associate professor at School of Physical Education and Sport at USP (University of São Paulo).
The situation in which Garrincha died 40 years ago (poor and far from the spotlight) was the hallmark of the country’s abandonment of great idols. The family had no money to pay for the funeral, which was paid for by lateral Nilton Santos, twice world champion with the striker in the national team in 1958 and 1962.
Pelé did not go to his former companion’s wake. He used to not go to these events. This meant that, at the height of the fight between the two, Diego Maradona accused him of having left Garrincha “to die in poverty.”
“Pelé is an immortalized figure. The idols of the occasion will be erased and will be forgotten. Not Pelé. I see an envious sorrow of athletes who will earn a lot of money, but will not remain in the memory of football as Pelé was”, says Katia Ruby.
It was not the first snub that the King received, before he died, from former members of the Brazilian national team. Several of them were in Doha, Qatar, to watch the World Cup at the invitation of FIFA or sponsors. Conmebol (South American Football Confederation), which had a space in the center of the capital, held a tribute to Pelé. It was public knowledge, in the world of football, how sick he was.
The only former athlete who was present was Argentine Javier Zanetti.
In comparison with the death of Diego Maradona, on November 25, 2020, Pelé was much less prestigious for historical selection names and managers. Twelve world champions, including players and members of the coaching staff, attended the Argentine’s wake. The same for four presidents of great teams and five former captains of alviceleste.
Among those who competed in World Cups for Brazil in this century, only Elano (2010) and Zé Roberto (2006) showed up at Pelé’s wake.
The last national sportsman to cause such commotion in death was Ayrton Senna. Circumstances were quite different. Then 34 years old, the pilot died hours after crashing his F1 into the wall of the Imola circuit, in Italy, in a race broadcast live by TV Globo.
At his burial, the coffin was carried by 14 Brazilian and foreign pilots. Among them, world champions Emerson Fittipaldi, Alain Prost and Jackie Stewart. Pelé’s was taken to the wake by his children and Santos security guards.
The repetition of images of the number 10’s goals, of his plays, and the omission of former national team players helped to cause indignation among fans, according to the description given by professor Ronaldo George Helal, coordinator of the Sport and Culture Research Group at Uerj ( State University of Rio de Janeiro).
“The narratives of the life trajectories of sporting idols frequently focus on characteristics that transform them into heroes. The explanation for this fact lies in the agonistic aspect, of struggle, that permeates the universe of sport. Competition is inherent to the spectacle itself”, he wrote in the study “The construction of narratives of idolatry in Brazilian football”.
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