Fluminense Football Club - Site Oficial.

|The Beginning

| Oscar Cox

| Arnaldo Guinle

| The Tricolor Fans

| Idols

| Conquests

 

The Tricolor Fans

Fluminense Football Club counts as fans illustrious and famous individuals including presidents, monarchs, artists and popular personalities. These loyalists have long been recognized both inside and outside of Laranjeiras sleading great spectacles. This has been particularly true since the 1950s when fans were victorious in the Competição de Torcidas (“Cheering Competitions”) of 1950, 1951 and 1952 organized by the Jornal do Sports. Since that time the tradition has been maintained. The long tradition was kept alive in 2008, in the final of the Taça Libertadores da América (now the Copa Santander Libertadores), in front of a packed Maracanã. Fluminense fans mounted a spectacular never witnessed before in a football stadium. Even eternal adversaries were moved by the performance, leaving Tricolor fans everywhere enormously proud of their championship team.

 

Incarnating an entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, Tricolor fans always manifest their unconditional amor for the club by participating in spectacles called Mosaicos Tricolores. These are displays of unity and artistry in the arquibancada of Maracanã when all sing as one voice, united in the objective of motivating the team and showing their appreciation for Fluminense. The slang pó-de-arroz (“rice powder”) became popular because of Carlos Alberto who signed with the club at the beginning of the 20th Century. The long tradition involves explosions of thousands of packages of talcum powder during the entrance of the team on the field.

When Carlos came from América to Fluminense in 1914, he feared that he would be discriminated against by Tricolor aristocrats because he was black. On account of his trepidation, Carlos attempted to disguise his dark skin by spreading pulverized rice on his body for a game played on 13 May 1914. During the game, however, the sweat running down his face left noticeable blotches. When the crowd realized this ploy, they turned and began shouting pó-de-arroz. It became yet one more name for the club and is still used today.

Some Tricolor fans have become folkloric and unforgettable personalities on account of their love, passion and loyalty to the team. Chico Guanabara was one of these unequalled Tricolor who never missed a game and always motivated the team by shouting and complaining to the officials. The famous Barriga (“belly”) was also part of this group. He would drink in victory or defeat to celebrate or lament his sorrow. But sober or not, he was a perfect gentleman, respectful, incapable of using obscene language and never hid the fact that his greatest idol was the Englishman Welfare.

The third unforgettable personality was Batista, a Marine sergeant. He had carte blanche to enter the club and served as a liaison for the games between Fluminense and the Riachuelo Football Club. The young fans at Maracanã soon became accustomed to seeing Careca (“The Bald One”). He would come to the stadium covered in rice powder, wearing a Tricolor cap and a flag draped over his back. He watched the games without sitting down between the first level of the seating area and the field barrier. Careca would always animate the fans with his songs and his rice-powder baptisms. Every time the opposition would mount a serious attack, he would duck behind the field-level barrier so as to not witness a goal against his Tricolor. 

Every Tricolor fan remembers personages that never became such well-known icons, but were nevertheless just as faithful. An excellent example was o Professor. The nickname was given by his neighbors who watched the games with him behind the goal in Laranjeiras. Aside from cheering for his team, the Professor was notorious for correcting Portuguese errors made by media professionals during the transmission of games, drawing applause and laughter from Tricolor fans between each Fluminense attack. Other fans became known for forming groups such as the Legião Tricolor, who would sing for the full 90 minutes to motivate the team, create new songs, maintain the old practice of painting the seats and wave Tricolor flags for the duration of games.

There are also esteemed artists, heads of state, intellectuals and famous personalities who support Fluminense. But Tricolor Fans are composed for the most part of an anonymous multitude, who place passion for the three colors above all else; that always believe; that sing the anthem not only with their voices but also their souls; that reverence their idols of the past and present; that never abandon ship; that feel their hearts beat with compassion when their team walks on the field; that eternalize the immense love in new generations; and that chant the verses in the stadiums to synthesize what it means to cheer for the pó-de-arroz from Laranjeiras:
“It’s for this that I sing, for this I wear the mantle, proud to be Tricolor…”

 

|The Beginning

| Oscar Cox

| Arnaldo Guinle

| The Tricolor Fans

| Idols

| Conquests