This is the Orejona.
And although this Saturday the final of the Champions League between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid at the San Siro in Milan, including stars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale, the figure most experience in the field could be metal and origin, an industrial warehouse on the outskirts of the city.
Disproportionate size and with handles that look like something out of the cup breakfast of some monster, the Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens (its official name) has an almost fantastic name and a much larger circumference than most players waiting lift someday.
Last week, Valentina Losa, executive director of GDE Bertoni, the company that manufactures the trophy was meeting with a group of visitors in the meeting room of your factory. Suddenly, a vendor who came to deliver an order stuck his head out to say goodbye. When he saw the hundreds of trophies lining the walls, all the work of Bertoni, could not resist. He went to take a look.
But they were not interested in tennis trophies nor even the replica trophy of the World Cup, with its twisted ball identifiable everywhere Olympic medals. What he asked was, "Can I?" And moved toward the trophy, silver, Champions League. Losa smiled and lifted with effort supplier reacting to its brightness with a grimace.
Inside the factory GDE. Bertoni, in Paderno Dugnano, the place where many of the trophies of the most important sporting events in the world Credit Calogero Russo made for The New York Times
"It's something that happens often," Losa said when the man went after asking you take out several photos with the phone.
The trophy measures 73.5 centimeters and weighs 7.5 kilos. It is one of the heaviest in the world-the sport of soccer league in the United States, the Lombardi, weighs less than half, and as the tournament has a long history.
The trophy is the work of a Swiss designer and in 1967 replaced a smaller version that was used from the beginning of the tournament. The following year the UEFA, the governing body of European football, decided that any club that won five times or three consecutive years could keep the trophy. Since then they have it, in its original version, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Ajax, B.C. Milan and Barcelona.
According Losa, GDE Bertoni began manufacturing the trophy more than four decades ago. At that time, his father and grandfather had business. At first they had a very diversified production and manufactured from artistic medals to sculptures, but the factory began to make a name in the sports world in the 60s, when he won the contract to produce the medals for the Olympic Games in Rome.
Ten years later, when Brazil won the world championship for the third time and claimed possession of the trophy, FIFA had to design a new one. Bertoni beat 50 other companies and built a model that was delivered in Germany in 1974 for the first time.
"Since then, football became a fundamental part of our business," said Losa.
This is evident during a visit to the factory. There were medals and trophies between buckets of chemicals and welding machinery. The Confederations Cup trophy 2017 rested on a corner shelf ( "we have to send it to FIFA next week," said Losa) while some employees ended several medals for youth world cup. On a table, someone checked several emails from FIFA which posed a different design for a medal.
GDE Bertoni factory is also responsible for the production of medals. Credit Calogero Russo for The New York Times
In this factory produced many other things. Among the prizes that are on the shelves is the trophy Youth Volleyball Championship Asia 1994, which was played in Manila and won China, brass buttons for jackets of the Italian Golf Federation and veneers uniforms Italian prison guards.
Some countries in the Middle East are also regulars. Several Bertoni employees were putting the finishing touches to a series of commemorative plaques commissioned by the government of Oman to highlight its attractions. Bertoni also has a contract with Bahrain to manufacture its military medals and the company receives a steady stream of orders from Gulf countries. One of the strangest commissions Losa arrived recalls embassy of Qatar, who wanted a new trophy for the Gulf Cup of Nations and wanted resembling that of the World Cup but heavier and white gold.
"The Qatari Olympic Committee commissioned it," said Losa, pointing a trophy that was essentially a large metal bird.
UEFA orders are fixed. Bertoni makes trophies and medals for various youth and women's tournaments, but its flagship project begins each fall, when they start working on the trophy next Champions League. The original version of the design, in silver, UEFA custody, but Bertoni produces a replica brass each year to the winning team.
There are two curious details, and very wasteful, the trophy manufacturing process. The Bertoni production manager, Luigi Scacchi, said putting the letters on the trophy so they are perfectly aligned is difficult because of the curve forming the metal. And Guerrino Giorgi, a craftsman who usually monitor manufacturing, said it could take more than two weeks to make the handles. "It's the hardest part."
But there is no doubt that these giant handles, which are not necessarily the most attractive element is what distinguishes the trophy everyone else.
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