How Happy Hilderaldo Bellini Started the Popular Tradition of Lifting Soccer Trophies into the Air
How Happy Hilderaldo Bellini Started the Popular Tradition of Lifting Soccer Trophies into the Air.
If you have been watching football matches carefully, especially competitions and championships, you would have discovered that the captain of the winning side always raises the trophy into the air in the course of celebrating his side’s victory.
Hilderaldo Bellini lifting the Rules Jimet trophy in 1958
Haven’t you?
That popular tradition was started by a football player whose name was Hilderaldo Bellini.
I am going to tell you, in the following paragraphs, who Hilderaldo Bellini was, how he started the popular tradition, and why he stated it.
Who Was Hilderaldo Bellini?
Hilderaldo Luiz Bellini was Italian by origin but was born and raised in a town called Itapira, which was around 180 km east of the Brazilian state capital of São Paulo, on the border with Minas Gerais in Brazil.
He started his soccer career in 1947, with an Itapira-based football club known as Sociedade Esportiva.
He left Sociedade Esportiva in 1949 to play for Esportiva, in nearby São João da Boa Vista, from where he left to join CR Vasco da Gama in 1952, and later for FC São Paulo (until 1968) and Athletico Paranaense in 1969, where he ended his active football career.
Bellini who was nicknamed “Eisenfuss”, captained Brazil at the 1958 FIFA World Cup in Sweden, which Brazil won 5-2 against the host, Sweden.
He was also the captain of the Brazilian team when they won their second World Cup trophy in Chile in 1962.
In recognition of his immense contribution to soccer fame in Brazil, he was honored with a statue at the entrance of the Maracana Stadium, which depicts him lifting the 1958 World Cup trophy. (Statue of Bellini at the entrance of Maracanã)
Bellini, who was born on June 7, 1930, died in São Paulo on 20 March 2014, at the age of 83, due to complications caused by Alzheimer’s disease, culminating with cardiac arrest.
When Did Hilderaldo Bellini Start the Popular Tradition?
He started the popular tradition of lifting soccer trophies into the air while celebrating a soccer victory in 1958 in Sweden, after his side, the Brazilian national team won their first-ever FIFA World Cup.
Hilderaldo Bellini lifting the Rules Jimet Trophy into the air
How Did He Do It?
His team, the ‘Samba Boys’ from Brazil, as I mentioned above, won the 1958 edition of the FIFA World Cup.
Soon after the FIFA World Cup trophy, then known as the Jules Rimet Trophy, was presented to him as the captain of the winning team, photographers requested to have a better view of the Cup, and probably take a good photograph of it.
When Hilderaldo heard about the photographers’ requests, he magnanimously lifted the trophy above his head into the air, for them to see.
As the photos of him lifting the trophy into the air were published around the world, the gesture became associated with victory.
From then till now, every cup-winning captain has always done the same thing.
To know more about the life and times of Hilderaldo Bellini, check out one of our previous posts on this blog, entitled: Soccer Personalities to Remember: Presenting the Great Hilderaldo Bellini
How Happy Hilderaldo Bellini Started the Popular Tradition of Lifting Soccer Trophies into the Air. THE END.
