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Celeste Arantes, mother of ‘King’ Pelé, died at the age of 101, a year and a half after the three-time Brazilian world champion, her family announced this Friday.
“Rest in peace, grandmother,” Pelé’s eldest son, Edinho, wrote on Instagram, a message illustrated with a photo of him hugging his grandmother.
One of her granddaughters, Kely Nascimento, also published a photo of the mother of one of the best soccer players of all time on the same social network.
The family did not provide details about the cause of death. According to Brazilian media, she had been hospitalized for eight days.
Doña Celeste, as she was known in Brazil, was born in 1923 in Três Corações, a town in the state of Minas Gerais, in the southeast of the country, where she gave birth at the age of 17 to Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the only soccer player in history to He has won three World Cups.
Married to Joao Ramos do Nascimento, ‘Dondinho’, she had two other children: Jair (‘Zoca’), who died of cancer in 2020, the same disease that defeated Pelé on December 29, 2022, and Maria Lucia.
The latter revealed shortly after the death of the ‘king’ of football that his mother, already a centenarian, was unaware of the death of her famous son.
“He’s in his own little world,” he then soberly told ESPN.
After Pelé’s death, the funeral procession carrying his coffin passed in front of his house in Santos, the port city near Sao Paulo where he spent his final years, and where his son shone for most of his career.
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