Even from a distance, the figure is unmistakable: The bulbous midsection. The tapered neck. The glistening veneer. And those handles — oh, those handles — could belong to no one else.
No one but Ol’ Big Ears.
While today’s European Champions League final between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid will feature megastars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale playing in Milan’s historic San Siro, the most enduring figure in club soccer’s biggest game actually could be the one made of metal and hailing from Paderno Dugnano, Italy, just outside the city center, on a nondescript street choked with industrial warehouses.
Photo: AP
Freakishly oversize and with handles that appear to have been pinched from Bigfoot’s coffee mug, the Coupe des Clubs Champions Europeens (that is how the trophy is inscribed) has both a whimsical nickname and a girth that stretches wider than those of most of the players who hope to lift it.
Just last week, Valentina Losa, chief executive of GDE Bertoni, which makes the trophy, was entertaining several visitors in a conference room at her company’s factory. Suddenly, an outside vendor who had just finished making a delivery poked his head in to say goodbye. When he saw there were hundreds of trophies lining the walls, all manufactured by Bertoni, he could not resist stepping in to look around.
However, the vendor did not focus on the tennis trophies or the Olympic medals or even the replica of the FIFA World Cup trophy, whose twisted golden ball is world renowned.
Instead he asked: “Can I?” and nodded toward the silver Champions League trophy.
Losa smiled, and the vendor hoisted it in the air, grunting at its heft and grinning at its shine.
“This happens a lot,” Losa said after the vendor — who requested multiple cellphone photographs — finally departed. “It’s the most common request by far.”
The trophy itself is about 74cm tall and weighs about 7.5kg, making it one of the more obese prizes in sports. (The NFL’s Lombardi trophy, by comparison, weighs only 3.2kg).
The trophy was originally produced by a Swiss designer in 1967, replacing a smaller version from the tournament’s early days. The next year, European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, made a rule that any club that won the tournament five times, or three years in a row, would be allowed to keep the trophy and, since then, Real Madrid, Ajax, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, AC Milan and Barcelona have claimed so-called originals.
GDE Bertoni first began manufacturing the trophy more than four decades ago, Losa said, which was back when her father and grandfather were running the business.
The company began to gain acclaim in the sports world in 1960 when it won the contract to create the medals given out at the Summer Olympics in Rome. Ten years later, after Brazil won the World Cup for the third time — claiming that trophy as its own — and FIFA needed to have a new trophy designed, Bertoni won out over more than 50 companies and delivered a trophy that was awarded for the first time in 1974 in Germany.
“From then on, football was a very big part of our business,” Losa said.
That much is clear just walking through the factory. Medals and trophies are scattered among the large vats of chemicals and welding machinery.
However, work from UEFA is steady. Bertoni produces trophies and medals for a variety of youth and women’s competitions, but its centerpiece project starts every fall, generally in September or October, when construction of the next Champions League trophy begins.
“For me? I like the Europa League one better,” Losa said. “But then again, no one ever comes in and asks for a picture with that one.”
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