According to Fifa president Gianni Infantino, each nation would be required to honor Pele with the naming of a football stadium.
Pele, the only player to have won three world cups and scoring 77 goals for Brazil, passed away on Thursday after a battle with cancer.
“We’re going to ask every country in the world to name one of their football stadiums with the name of Pele,” Infantino claimed, when he attended Brazilian club Santos on Monday.
Pele was laid to rest at Estadio Urbano Caldeira in Vila Belmiro, the site of his former club, where he spent 18 years as a player and amassed an incredible 643 goals in 659 games. A 24-hour public wake started on Monday morning.
Thousands of mourners have gathered to pay their respects at his casket, which was positioned in the middle of the field.
Thousands more people gathered on the streets as the hearse drove by while some admirers stood in line all night to see the casket.
Edinho, Pele’s son, and Ze Roberto, a former midfielder for Brazil, assisted in carrying the casket onto the field, and Vinicius Junior and Neymar, current Brazilian players, delivered floral tributes.
“We are talking about a global icon,” football journalist Tim Vickery told BBC. “so this is going to be a huge global occasion.”
“Pele is a source of huge pride for Brazil. He is not from Santos but it is a city that he made his home, and he is theirs – but he also belongs to the world.”
After the open wake on Tuesday, January 3, his coffin will go through the streets of Santos and the house where he lived the majority of his life before being buried at the Ecumenical Memorial Necropolis cemetery.
Following Pele’s passing, the Brazilian government declared three days of national mourning.
