Brazilians bid a final farewell this week to football giant Pele, starting Monday with a 24-hour public wake at the stadium of his long-time team, Santos.

The oceanside home of the team nicknamed “Peixe” — “fish” in Portuguese — is expecting a huge influx of fans looking to honour the “King” of football, who died aged 82 on Thursday after a long battle with cancer.

Stadium doors will open at 10:00 am local time (1300 GMT). The coffin bearing the remains of the only player to have won three World Cups will be displayed in the centre of the field.

Known as Vila Belmiro after the neighbourhood where it is located, the black-and-white stadium has a capacity of 16,000 people.

In the stands, three giant flags could be seen Sunday, one with an image of Pele displaying the famous number 10 on his jersey.

Another bore the message “Long live the king”; the third said simply, “Pele 82 years.”Entry to the stadium will be allowed until 10:00 am Tuesday, officials said.After that, a procession will be held through the streets of Santos, a port city about 75 kilometres (47 miles) from the state capital Sao Paulo.

The parade will pass the house of Pele’s mother, 100-year-old Celeste Arantes, who is unaware that her world-famous son has died.

The procession will end at a cemetery in Santos, where Pele will be interred in a special mausoleum.

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Pelé, the Brazilian football legend who won three World Cups and became the sport’s first global icon, has died at the age of 82.

“Everything that we are, is thanks to you,” his daughter Kely Nascimento wrote in a post on Instagram. “We love you infinitely. Rest in peace.”

Pelé was admitted to a hospital in São Paulo in late November for a respiratory infection and for complications related to colon cancer.

Last week, the hospital said his health had worsened as his cancer progressed.For more than 60 years, the name Pelé has been synonymous with soccer.

He played in four World Cups and is the only player in history to win three, but his legacy stretched far beyond his trophy haul and remarkable goal-scoring record.

“I was born to play football, just like Beethoven was born to write music and Michelangelo was born to paint,”

Pelé famously said.Pelé was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in Três Corações – an inland city roughly 155 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro – in 1940, before his family moved to the city of Bauru in São Paulo.

As a child, his first taste of soccer involved playing barefoot with socks and rags rolled up into a ball – a humble beginning that would grow into a long and fruitful career.

But when he first took up the game, his ambitions were modest.“My dad was a good football player, he scored a lot of goals,” Pelé told CNN in 2015. “His name was Dondinho; I wanted to be like him.“He was famous in Brazil, in Minas Gerais. He was my role model. I always wanted to be like him, but what happened, to this day, only God can explain.”

As a teenager, Pelé left home and began training with Santos, scoring his first goal for the club side before his 16th birthday. He would go on to score 619 times over 638 appearances for the club, but it is his feats in the iconic yellow jersey of Brazil for which he is best remembered.

The world first got a glimpse of Pelé’s dazzling ability in 1958, when he made his World Cup debut aged 17.

He scored Brazil’s only goal in the country’s quarterfinal victory against Wales, then netted a hat-trick in the semifinal against France and two in the final against host Sweden.

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