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WORLD CUP

The workshop that makes eliminated Italy home of the World Cup

When the World Cup is held aloft in July, it won't be an Italian lifting the trophy. The eliminated Azzurri will not brighten the tournament, but Italians will still make the cup shine.

Published: 13 May 2018 11:26 CEST
The workshop that makes eliminated Italy home of the World Cup
An GDE Bertoni artisan operator cleans a replica of the World Cup trophy. Photo: AFP

The four-time winners' humiliating exit in November's playoff defeat to Sweden cast a pall over one of the world's proudest football nations.

Italy are not going to the World Cup, but the World Cup will come to Italy.

Every four years, in an anonymous building in an industrial town near Milan, amid the clouds of metal dust and sound of presses and hammers, an Italian company gets its hands on the World Cup trophy itself — and gives it a makeover.

GDE Bertoni, a small business with 12 employees based in the Milanese suburb of Paderno Dugnano, designed and created the current cup in 1971 after Brazil kept the Jules Rimet trophy after they won the World Cup for the third time, and every four years it returned home for a spruce up.

“It's always a special feeling when the original trophy comes back to us, even if we see the replica every day,” says Valentina Losa, director of the company her great-grandfather founded in 1938.

The trophy was made by the company's then-artistic director, sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga, helped by Valentina's father Giorgio, who suggested the globe at the top of the trophy.

“The original is the original. It's like the difference between seeing the original Mona Lisa or a copy. It's not the same feeling at all.”

Standing in front of an autographed photo of Franz Beckenbauer, who in 1974 became the first captain to lift the new trophy, Losa recounts how her company bagged the contract.

“There were 53 proposals from all over the world, but we were the only ones to have made a model, a physical product,” she says. “Having it in front of you, not just a drawing — that plays.”

Soon after every World Cup, FIFA sends the trophy, which is 38 centimetres long and contains more than six kilos of solid gold and malachite, home to be tended to.

“For four years it travels, and is exposed to the elements. It's a little damaged, but we put it back into shape,” says Pietro Brambilla, one of the Bertoni workshop's eight specialist workers.

Brambilla has no interest in football but something changes when he sees the World Cup winning captain lift the trophy.

“I always shed a tear at that moment because that trophy passed through my hands. It's an amazing feeling,” he says.

“Not many people can say that they've held the World Cup.”

As well as making the original, Bortoni is also responsible for making a replica which the eventual winners of each tournament get to keep.

The replica is made from brass, after which is undergoes a range of treatments including milling and polishing before being bathed in 24-carat gold.

“We do this by eye. Once we see that she is beautiful, it comes out,” says Ahmed Ait Siti Abdelkader, depositing a varnish that will keep the trophy shiny for about a decade.

“The World Cup is something different,” he adds. “We make a lot of cups here, for Africa, the Gulf, Europe, Central America … but this one has an extraordinary effect on you, different from all the others.”

On July 15th Neymar, Lionel Messi, Hugo Lloris, Sergio Ramos or Manuel Neuer could be lifting the trophy rather than Italy captain Gianluigi Buffon, whose post-elimination tears captured a nation's heart in November. But a few months later it will come home again to an industrial corner of Italy for its regular once-over.

“It's such a coveted trophy that when a team wins it, the players mess around with it and take advantage of it — a bit too much,” says Losa.

“Sometimes it comes back with a bit of work to do. Let's just say that in 2006 the Italians really partied.”

READ ALSO: Five things that explain Italy's World Cup disaster

SPORT

Norway’s football clubs to vote on Qatar World Cup boycott

Will Norwegian football star Erling Braut Haaland stay home or play on what fans have dubbed a "cemetery?" This Sunday, a meeting of Norway's football community will decide whether to boycott next year's World Cup in Qatar.

Published: 18 June 2021 11:27 CEST
Norway's football clubs to vote on Qatar World Cup boycott
Norway's forward Erling Haaland (L) and teammates wear jerseys reading "Fair play for migrant workers" before the international friendly football match between Norway and Greece at La Rosaleda stadium in Malaga in preperation for the UEFA European Championships, on June 6, 2021. JORGE GUERRERO / AFP

Under pressure from grassroots activists the Norwegian Football Federation(NFF) has decided to hold an extraordinary congress to decide on whether to pass up football’s showpiece event all together.

The games on the pitches in the Middle Eastern emirate will “unfortunately be like playing on a cemetery,” according to Ole Kristian Sandvik, spokesman of the Norwegian Supporters Alliance (NSA), invoking a commonly used metaphor among opponents of Norway’s participation.

Norway, which has not qualified for a major international competition since Euro 2000, is currently fourth in its World Cup qualifying group behind Turkey, the Netherlands and Montenegro. 

So while qualification seems an uphill task, the result of the vote could have an impact on whether Norway and its young star Haaland — one of the rising stars of world football — continue to play qualifying matches. 

The movement calling for a boycott began north of the Arctic Circle when football club Tromso IL spoke out against turning a blind eye to alleged human rights abuses at the end of February.

“We can no longer sit and watch people die in the name of football,” the first division club proclaimed.

Qatar has faced criticism for its treatment of migrant workers, many of whom are involved in the construction of stadiums and infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup, with campaigners accusing employers of exploitation and forcing labourers to work in dangerous conditions.

Qatari authorities meanwhile insist they have done more than any country in the region to improve worker welfare.

“There is no doubt that this World Cup should never have been awarded to Qatar,” Tom Hogli, a former professional footballer turned public relations officer for Tromso IL, told AFP.

“The conditions there are abominable and many have lost their lives,” he added.

In March, a spokesman for the Qatari organisers put the number of deaths on the construction sites at “three” since 2014, with another 35 having died away from their workplaces, challenging the heavy toll reported by some rights groups.

Push from fans
The Tromso call began gathering pace in Norway, where clubs operate under a democratic structure, and under pressure from fans, many teams now say “nei” (no).

According to Sandvik, the fans feel that the deaths on the World Cup sites would have been avoided “if they had not had to build hotels, railways and stadiums”.

Nearly half of Norwegians, 49 percent, now say they are in favour of a boycott, while only 29 percent are against it, according to a poll published by newspaper VG on Wednesday.

The Nordic country’s national squad has already protested conditions in Qatar, but stopped short of calling for a boycott.

Before recent Norway games, Borussia Dortmund superstar Haaland, captain Martin Odegaard and the rest of the team have worn t-shirts with slogans like “Human rights on and off the pitch.”

Other countries, like Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark have also followed suit.

FIFA, on the other hand, argue that awarding the hosting of the World Cup in Qatar has opened the door to social progress.

“We know there is still work to be done, but we need to recognise the significant progress achieved in a very short time,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in May.

‘Few successes’ 
While the executive committee of the NFF have said they regret Qatar being awarded the World Cup, they oppose a boycott.

President Terje Svendsen said he thought it was “not the right tool to improve the human rights situation or the working conditions in Qatar,” when speaking at the federation’s ordinary annual congress in March.

According to the NFF, a boycott could end up costing Norway 205 million Norwegian kroner ($24 million, 20 million euros) in fines and compensation as well as lost revenue.

Feeling the pressure from grassroots campaigns, the NFF referred the matter to an extraordinary congress which on Sunday will bring together the eight members of its executive committee, representatives of 18 districts and of hundreds of professional and amateur clubs.

The discussions will be revolve around the findings of an expert committee which, with the exception of two members representing fans, has also come out against a boycott.

“For a boycott to succeed, you need a critical mass behind it, an opposition that calls for it in the country, the UN to put pressure on the
authorities, the business world, the trade unions and civil society to put pressure on it in the long term,” committee chairman Sven Mollekleiv said in a debate hosted by broadcaster TV2.

“Historically, there are few successes,” he said.

Rather than a boycott, the committee recommended 26 measures to consolidate and further the gains made in Qatar but also to ensure that FIFA doesn’t become complicit in so called “sportswashing” — the polishing of a country’s public image through a major sporting event.

Some initial supporters of a boycott, like Tromso’s Hogli, have since sided with these conclusions, although calls for a complete boycott remain.

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