Pele fans search Brazilian football legend’s hometown for souvenirs
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The deteriorating health and eventual death of sports legend Pele has rekindled curiosity about the quiet town of Tres Coracoes in southeastern Brazil, where the football prodigy was born 82 years ago.
Fans seeking rare mementos of the Brazilian star are scouring the town of 75,000 inhabitants where Pele was born to a poor family and spent the first years of his life.
A month ago, Pele was admitted to Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, where he had been undergoing treatment for colon cancer since late 2021.
Eight days ago, the hospital announced Pele’s cancer was showing “progression” and he needed “more extensive care to treat kidney and heart failure.”
Tres Coracoes, which means “three hearts” in Portuguese, is located some 250 kilometers (150 miles) from Brazil’s three major metropolises: Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
The small town is surrounded by coffee plantations and is famous for just one thing: the birth, in 1940, of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known as Pele.
Pele moved away from Tres Coracoes at a young age before joining his longtime club, Santos FC, as a teenager.
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Santos, a port city near Sao Paulo, now hosts the Pele Museum, where most of his trophies and other memorabilia are displayed.
The football star’s declining health has drawn fans to the museum and to Tres Coracoes, where they can visit Pele House — a replica of his first home.
“I had never been to this house, which is already ten years old,” said Neilor Henrique, who lives nearby.
“But the news of his hospitalization made me want to visit it,” the 41-year-old told AFP.
Built based on the memories of Pele’s mother, Celeste Arantes do Nascimento, now 100 years old, the house shows the family’s modest origins, with a few pieces of wooden furniture, straw mattresses, an old radio and a framed portrait of his parents on one wall.
