Fluminense

Fluminense Football Club was founded on July 21, 1902. Fluminense means fluvial in Portuguese, and is also a colloquial name for a native of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Their biggest sporting rivals are from the same city: Flamengo, Botafogo and Vasco da Gama.

Fans

Fans are called tricolores, a reference to the team’s three colours (red, white and green). One of the team’s most famous chants is “A Bênção, João de Deus” (“Bless us, John of God”), a song that was composed in honour of the pope John Paul II on his first visit to Brazil, in 1980. History is that Fluminense fans spontaneously started singing the famous song when the team was to decide the 1980 state championship on penalty shootout against arch-rivals Vasco da Gama. Fluminense won the championship.

Famous players

Click here for Fluminense's Current squad

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Stadium

Fluminense’s stadium is Estadio das Laranjeiras, built in 1905, with a maximum capacity of 8,000 people. However, Fluminense plays all its big games in the Maracana stadium.

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Origins

Oscar Cox was responsible for introducing football to Rio. He had played it in Switzerland, during his studies in College La Ville, in Lausanne. When he returned to Rio, aged 22, he gathered a group of men who also wanted to play this relatively unknown sport. After playing some matches in Rio and in São Paulo, they decided to found a club. The foundation meeting took place on July 21, 1902, at Horacio da Costa Santos’ home, at Rua Marques de Abrantes, 51, and was attended by Horacio da Costa Santos, Mario Rocha, Walter Schuback, Felix Ignacio Frias, Mario Frias, Heraclito de Vasconcellos, Oscar Cox, Joao Carlos de Mello, Domingos Moutinho, Louis da Nobrega Junior, Arthur Gibbons, Virgilio Leite, Manoel Rios, Americo da Silva Couto, Eurico de Moraes, Victor Francois Etchegaray, Anselmo C. Mascarenhas, Alvaro Drolhe da Costa, Julio de Moraes and A. H. Roberts. Oscar Cox was elected the first president.

The first match was on October 19, 1902, at Paysandu Cricket Club field, against Rio Football Club. Fluminense won 8-0 and the first goal was scored by Horacio da Costa Santos. The team won the first championship they played, in 1906, the Campeonato Carioca (Championship of Rio de Janeiro). They also won the next three, in 1907, 1908 and 1909.

In 1911, they were again champions, and won all matches in Campeonato Carioca. However, a huge crisis took place at the end of this year, when 9 players from the main team quit the club after quarreling over who should coach the team and decided to play for Flamengo, which had previously been only a rowing club. By founding the football section of Flamengo, they started one of the most famous rivalries in Brazilian football: the Fla-Flu (Flamengo versus Fluminense). The first Fla-Flu happened on July 7, 1912. Although Flamengo had nearly all the players who had won the championship the previous year, Fluminense, with only two survivors from the champion team (Oswaldo Gomes and James Calvert), won the game 3-2.

On July 27, 1914, Fluminense’s ground hosted the first match of Brazil national football team against Exeter City F.C., an English club. Brazil won 2-0 and Oswaldo Gomes scored the first goal.

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The Olympic Cup

Although considered one of the most successful football clubs in Brazil, Fluminense’s greatest honour was not won in a football field. Among its collection of national and international trophies stands the diploma received in 1949 regarding the award of the IOC’s Olympic Cup (“Coupe Olympique“).

The Cup is a non-competitive award, instituted by Pierre de Coubertin in 1906, for distinguished service in upholding the ideals of the Olympic Movement and to recognise the particular merits of institutions or associations and their services rendered to sport. The Cup is in permanent exhibition at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.

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Titles

State

  • 30 times winner of the Campeonato Carioca (Rio de Janeiro State Championship): 1906, 1907 (Shared with Botafogo), 1908, 1909, 1911, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1940, 1941, 1946, 1951, 1959, 1964, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1995, 2002, 2005
  • Copa Rio:1998
  • Taça Guanabara: 1966, 1969, 1971, 1975, 1983, 1985, 1991, 1993.
  • Taça Rio: 1990, 2005

National

  • Brazilian Champions 1984
  • Brazilian Champions Série C 1999
  • Rio-São Paulo Tournament 1957, 1960
  • Torneio Roberto Gomes Pedrosa 1970
  • Copa São Paulo de Juniores 1971, 1973, 1977, 1986, 1989
  • Copa Macaé de Juvenis 2002, 2003

International

  • II Copa Rio 1952
  • I Copa Viña del Mar 1976
  • Paris Tournament 1976, 1987
  • XXXII Troféu Teresa Herrera 1977
  • Seoul Tournament 1984
  • Kirin Cup 1987
  • Kiev Tournament 1989

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External links

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Source: Wikipedia On-line Encyclopedia