FIFA has requested to keep Pelé's feet for historical reasons and his family have given the permission for his feet to be kept in the museum.
False. FIFA denies any such plans, and there are no official sources for the claim.
A Facebook post claiming the late Brazilian footballer Pelé’s feet will be kept in a museum at FIFA’s request is false.
The claim has been spread on Twitter and by some news outlets but has been fact checked by various other organisations which have found no evidence to support the claim. The post itself does not give any source for the claim, and FIFA has denied it
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Legendary Brazilian footballer Pelé died last week at age 82, and his funeral in Santos, near São Paulo, saw thousands line the street in tribute.
Since his death, FIFA—football’s international governing body—has created an obituary webpage with articles, videos and photos about Pelé. None of these contain any mention of plans to display his feet in a museum, nor mention discussion with his family regarding this.
In addition, the FIFA Museum webpage dedicated to Pelé, which shows the items relating to him in the museum, makes no mention of his feet. FIFA’s official twitter feed contains no announcements of the sort since his death on 29th December.
A FIFA spokesperson told Full Fact: “We can completely refute this claim.”
A keyword search for major newspaper stories on Pelé returned no verifiable source for the claim.
Image courtesy of Fotopersbureau De Boer
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because FIFA has no plans to display Pelé’s feet in a museum.
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