Colombia is the first Latin American country to comply with FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s request to name a stadium after Pelé.
Infantino said Monday that world soccer’s governing body will ask all countries to name a stadium after the Brazilian icon, widely considered the greatest soccer player of all time, who died last week after a long battle with the disease. .
And on Wednesday night, the governor of the Meta department in southern Colombia, Juan Guillermo Zuluaga, announced on Twitter that a stadium in the city of Villavicencio “will be called BELLO HORIZONTE ‘REY PELE’.”
“Future generations should know who this world soccer icon was,” Zuluaga said.
The 15,000-capacity stadium opened in 1958 was previously called simply Bello Horizonte, meaning “beautiful horizon” in Spanish.
It is the home of the modest Colombian Llaneros of the second division.
Pelé died on December 29 at the age of 82 after a long battle with colon cancer.
He was buried Tuesday in Santos, the city where he played most of his soccer career and where he made a name for himself.
While attending Pele’s wake, Infantino said he would ask all FIFA member associations to pay tribute to Pele by renaming a stadium after the three-time World Cup winner.
Colombia was beaten in the stadium move by Cape Verde, whose prime minister José Ulisses Correia e Silva had announced on Wednesday the renaming of the national stadium in the capital, Praia.
The city of Maceio, in northeastern Brazil, has had a stadium called “Rei Pele” (King Pele) since 1979, although it is commonly known as Trapichao.
