Fluminense Football Club is
a sports club based in Rio de Janeiro
, Brazil
.
Founded in the beginning of the
20th
century as a single-sport institution,
Fluminense is today an
umbrella organization for several
teams in more than 16 different sport activities. The most popular
endeavour of
Fluminense, however, continues to be
football. This article concerns
itself with
Fluminense solely as a
professional football club.
History
Fluminense
Football Club was founded on July 21, 1902 in Rio de Janeiro by Oscar Cox, a Brazilian of British heritage. Settled in the then
aristocratic neighbourhood of
Laranjeiras, Fluminense was formed by sons of
the elite who had come into contact with football while studying in
Europe. The first official match was played
against now defunct
Rio FC, and ended 8-0 for
Fluminense. The first achievement came in 1906, when Fluminense won
its first
Campeonato
Carioca.
In 1911, disagreement between Fluminense players led to the
formation of
Flamengo's
football team, which remains the club's main rival. The so-called
Fla-Flu derby is considered the biggest in the history
of
Brazilian football. Five years
later, in Fluminense's stadium, the
Brazilian national football
team debuted. It was also there that they conquered their first
title, in
1919. One
year later,
Afrânio
Costa, a Fluminense
shooting
athlete, won the first medal for Brazil in the history of the
Olympic Games.
By 1924, Fluminense had 4,000 members, a stadium for 25,000 people
and facilities that impressed clubs in Europe. Nonetheless,
Fluminense's long association with the rich tainted its history
with racism. In an unfortunate event in 1914, a
mulatto man playing for Fluminense decided to cover
himself in
cosmetic powder to disguise
the colour of his skin. This ultimately led to one of the club's
nicknames,
pó de arroz, which is the Portuguese for white
powder. After 1925, Fluminense began pressuring for the
professionalization of football, so far
restricted to club affiliates. But it wasn't before 1950 that the
club started to accept black players in its squad.
The following years saw an expansion of the club's hegemony in Rio.
Fluminense would remain unsurpassed in terms of state championships
until 2009. International acclaim came in 1949 with the award of
the
Olympic Cup and was further fostered
in 1952 with Fluminense's first
intercontinental honour, the
Copa Rio. The club established
itself regionally with the achievement of two
Torneio Rio-São Paulo cups in
1957 and 1960. National honours followed in 1970 and 1984, with
Taça de Prata and
Série A cups, respectively.
Stained glass windows in Fluminense's headquarters
A disastrous campaign led to the club's relegation from
Série A in
1996. A set of
off-field political maneuvers, however, allowed Fluminense to
remain in Brazil's main domestic league, only to be relegated again
in the next year. Completely out of control, the club was relegated
from
Série B to
Série C in 1998. In 1999, Fluminense won the
Série C championship and was to be promoted to Série B when it was
invited to take part in
Copa
João Havelange, a championship that replaced the traditional
Série A in 2000. In 2001, it was decided that all clubs which took
part in Copa João Havelange's so-called
Blue Group should be
kept in Série A, and so Fluminense Football Club found its way back
to the top, where it has been ever since.
In 2007, Fluminense won the
Copa do
Brasil and was admitted in the
Copa Libertadores again after 23 years.
The club's campaign led it into the finals and included remarkable
matches against
Arsenal de
Sarandí,
São Paulo
and
Boca Juniors. Fluminense lost the
cup to
LDU Quito in a dispute of penalty
shootouts.
Honours
International
National
Regional
State
- Campeonato Carioca (30):
- 1906, 1907, 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
Friendly Tournaments
Others
In 1949,
Fluminense Football Club was awarded the Olympic Cup by the International
Olympic Committee
. The official 2009 kit features the Olympic
Cup as a 60th year celebration.
Partners
Companies and institutions that Fluminense Football Club currently
has partnership deals with include:
People
Current Squad
As of September 24, 2009.
Football Officials
As of September 2009, Fluminense Football Club was undergoing
serious political turmoil, with no clearly defined chain of
command.
Notable Former Players
The most notable players for Fluminense Football Club so far have
been:
Performance
Fluminense Football Club took part in 36 of the 38 official
Serie A championships
organized in Brazil since 1971. Since the number of participating
teams has changed considerably over time, any accurate performance
measurement must take this variable into account. In the two tables
below, the
performance field for a given position
p in a
universe of
n teams was calculated using the formula:
- x = \frac{n-p}{n} \times 100
This allows for an
asymptotic limit of
100%, since
p will never be zero.
Fluminense Football Club has an
average
performance of 56% in Série A, with a
standard deviation of 28%.
Sponsors
Companies that Fluminense Football Club currently has sponsorship
deals with include:
- Adidas - Official Partner.
- Unimed - Main Partner since 1999.
Support
Fluminense supporters in Maracanã
The
supporters of Fluminense Football Club are usually related to the
upper classes of Rio de
Janeiro. However, the popularity of the club reaches
beyond the city limits. Recent polls have estimated the number of
supporters to be between 1.4% and 3.7% of the
Brazilian population. Considering a
universe of 185 million people, that would account for numbers
between 2.6 and 6.8 million.
The best attendance ever observed in a match of Fluminense was
registered on December 15, 1963 in a rally against Flamengo.
On that
day, an impressive amount of 194,000 people showed up at the
Maracanã
stadium. This occasion remains as the
stadium's record for a match between clubs.
Notable
supporters of Fluminense include composers Cartola and Chico
Buarque, FIFA
president of
honour João Havelange, musician
Ivan Lins, poet and actor Mario Lago, journalist and songwriter Nelson Motta and dramatist, journalist and
writer Nelson
Rodrigues.
References
External links
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