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Cruzeiro Esporte Clube

Cruzeiro Esporte Clube is a Brazilian professional football club, based in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Although competing in a number of different sports, Cruzeiro is mostly known for its association football team. It plays in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, the top tier of the Brazilian football league system, as well as in the Campeonato Mineiro, the state of Minas Gerais's premier state league.

The club was founded on 2 January 1921, by sportsmen from the Italian colony of Belo Horizonte as Società Sportiva Palestra Itália. As a result of the Second World War, the Brazilian federal government banned the use of any symbols referring to the Axis powers in 1942. On October 7, 1942, club board members rebaptized the club with the name of a leading national symbol: the Cruzeiro do Sul's constellation. Cruzeiro play their home games at the Mineirão stadium, which currently holds up to 62,547 spectators. Cruzeiro's regular kit colors are blue shirts and white shorts with white socks.

Cruzeiro is one of Brazil's most successful clubs. It won the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A for the first time in 1966, after defeating Santos' Os Santásticos in the final series. Cruzeiro has won the Brasileirão again in 2003, 2013 and 2014, obtaining the best campaign in the present format of the competition. Cruzeiro has also won record six Copa do Brasil titles and the Campeonato Mineiro 38 times. Cruzeiro won the defunct state competitions Taça Minas Gerais five times, the Copa dos Campeões Mineiros twice, Copa Sul Minas twice, the Torneio Início 8 times and the Supercampeonato Mineiro once. A Raposa also obtained many international laurels such as two Copa Libertadores, two Supercopa Libertadores, one Recopa Sudamericana, one Copa de Oro and one Copa Master de Supercopa. Cruzeiro is one of the two Brazilian clubs to complete the Domestic Treble, a feat accomplished in 2003 after winning the Campeonato Mineiro, the 2003 Copa do Brasil and the 2003 Brasileirão.

Cruzeiro hold a long-standing rivalry against Atlético Mineiro. It has contributed many key and famous players towards Brazil's FIFA World Cup squads such as Piazza, Tostão, Nelinho, Ronaldo, Luisão, Alex, Maicon, Cris, Dida, Jairzinho, Rivaldo, and Edílson among so many others, as well as towards other countries' FIFA World Cup squads, including Roberto Perfumo and Juan Pablo Sorin from Argentina, and Giorgian de Arrascaeta from Uruguay.

History
Cruzeiro's history is traced back to the Italian community living in Belo Horizonte, a city where already some Italian immigrants lived and their desire to set up a football club. Similar to the Italians of São Paulo (who founded Palestra Itália, now known as Palmeiras) the people of Belo Horizonte wanted the Italian colonies in Minas Gerais to have its own club as well.

In the sporting goods and footwear Augustine Ranieri's factory, located on the street of Caetés, it was decided the foundation of the club should tackle the three major capital: Atlético Mineiro, America-MG and Yale. Was born at that moment, the Società Sportiva Palestra Italia, established on 2 January 1921.

The meeting was attended by 95 founders present the shield and uniform that made reference to the Italian colors, and whose SSPI description would be recorded in the center shell. Another decision was that only members of the Italian colony could wear the shirt. Aurelio Noce was elected the first President.

The Palestra Italia emerged as the representative of the Italian colony. And is characterized as a team of Italian descent, Palestra also stood out by having elements of the Belo Horizonte working class, unlike Atlético and América, who had their consisting squad of college students coming from influential and wealthy families of the city.

The idea of the club being created took a big step when Yale, a sports team from the city, went through an administrative crisis. When some players left Yale over a dispute (Yale, which itself had connections to the Italian community), some went on to found the all Italian, Sociedade Esportiva Palestra Itália of Belo Horizonte. Until 1925 the club would only allow Italian men to participate, despite other teams in the nation accepting people of all skin colors and ethnicities.

Palestra debuted in the Prado Mineiro Stadium with a 2–0 win in a friendly on 3 April 1921, against a combination from Nova Lima. The Nova Lima team united players from two teams from the city: Villa Nova, and Palmeiras, another team form Nova Lima. However, the first official match of Palestra was in a 3–0 win over future archrivals Clube Atlético Mineiro. In January 1942, Brazil entered World War II and a decree of the federal government forbade the use of terms from enemy nations in entities, institutions, establishments, etc. With this, the Italian name was removed and the club could no longer call themselves Palestra Italia. The name was changed to Sociedade Esportiva Palestra Mineiro.

Around six months later, the president Ennes Cyro Poni called a general assembly for 7 October and suggested the name Ypiranga. Between 3 and 7 October, the local media published the new name thinking it would be approved. In assembly, the counselors and associates kept professional system and approved changing club's name and colors. Yale and Ypiranga were suggested, but Cruzeiro Esporte Clube was chosen to honor the biggest symbol of Brazil, the constellation of Crux. The idea was from Oswaldo Pinto Coelho. However, the club kept playing as "Palestra Mineiro" until 1943, when the local Federation approved the new statutes. The approved colors were blue and white, chosen as a compromise to appease the Italian factions within the club management, as it was both representative of the Brazilian flag and the Italian football national team (blue is the color of House of Savoy, who ruled Italy from 1861 to 1946).

With the inauguration of the Mineirão in 1965, Cruzeiro entered one of the most successful periods in its history, in which the club won five Campeonato Mineiro titles in a row, and went on to win its first national title, the 1966 Taça Brasil (the highest honor in Brazilian football at that time) beating Santos of Pelé in the final. Cruzeiro won the first leg 6–2 at the Mineirão, and the second leg 3–2 in São Paulo. In the 1974 Campeonato Brasileiro Série A Cruzeiro were runner-up for the first time, after losing to Vasco in the finals. Later in 1975, Cruzeiro were runner-up in the Campeonato Brasileiro again, this time losing to Internacional. In 1976, Cruzeiro won its first Copa Libertadores de América, over River Plate of Argentina. Cruzeiro went on to be runners-up of the same competition in 1977, being defeated in the finals by Boca Juniors, also of Argentina. After winning the 1976 Copa Libertadores, they participated in the 1976 Intercontinental Cup, now renamed the FIFA Club World Championship, for the first time and tied Bayern Munich 0–0 at the Mineirão, but lost 2–0 to Bayern in the Olympiastadion.

After tasting success in the 1960s and 1970s, Cruzeiro entered a dark period in the 1980s. With the exception of a couple of Campeonato Mineiro wins, the club won no other championships in the 1980s, and had its worst performances in the Campeonato Brasileiro, 33rd in 1984 and 29th in 1985. The 1980s was the only decade Cruzeiro did not participate once in the Copa Libertadores since the tournament's creation in 1960. The club were invited to Europe in 1988 by Scottish side Celtic to play a friendly as part of the Glasgow club's centenary celebrations.

In the 1990s a new era began, and a 15-year sequence of at least one title per year was initiated. This included six of the club's seven international championships and a Campeonato Brasileiro (2003). In December 2010 the CBF (the governing body of Brazilian football) also recognized Cruzeiro as Brazilian champion of 1966, for having beaten Santos of Pelé: 6–2 in Belo Horizonte and 2–3 in São Paulo. The club's biggest exploit in the 21st century happened when it won the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A. With 100 points earned during the season, and just over 100 goals scored in 46 matches, it was one of the most successful campaigns ever by a club in a Brazilian championship. In 2003, besides winning the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, Cruzeiro also won the Copa do Brasil and the Campeonato Mineiro, to become the only Brazilian team to win the triple crown.

From 2003 to 2012 Cruzeiro have only won one major tournament (four times): the Campeonato Mineiro (2004, 2006, 2008, 2009). However, the club finished in the top five of the Campeonato Brasileiro in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, guaranteeing a spot in the Copa Libertadores for four consecutive years (2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011). In 2010, after a great campaign in the Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A, Cruzeiro took the second place and qualified for the Copa Libertadores da America for 2011. Cruzeiro's biggest success in recent years was reaching the finals of the 2009 Copa Libertadores, but they lost to Estudiantes de La Plata 2–1. After a disastrous 2011 season, escaping relegation only in the last round after a triumphant 6–1 against arch-rival Atlético, Gilvan Tavares became president for the 2012-2013-2014 triennium. 2012 was slightly better than 2011, but still Cruzeiro won no titles. In 2013 Cruzeiro lost Campeonato Mineiro again, despite displaying a good game against smaller clubs. Copa do Brasil started promising but Cruzeiro was knocked out by future champion Flamengo in the quarterfinals. After the elimination Cruzeiro went all in to Campeonato Brasileiro and was crowned champion for the third time, this time four rounds before the championship ended, playing an offensive and intense game that led many, including press and runners-up, to attribute the title many rounds before the mathematical confirmation. Cruzeiro's 2014 season was even more successful. It started with Cruzeiro winning the Campeonato Mineiro without losing a single match in the whole competition. In the Copa Libertadores da America, Cruzeiro was knocked out, in the quarter finals, by future champion San Lorenzo de Almagro, being the last remaining Brazilian team in the competition. This loss did not prevent Cruzeiro to lead the Campeonato Brasileiro for almost the whole competition, being crowned champion for the fourth time and becoming the second team not from Rio de Janeiro nor Sao Paulo to win the Campeonato Brasileiro twice in a row. Cruzeiro also got to the final of the Copa do Brasil, but lost both matches to rival Atlético Mineiro.

Colors

When Cruzeiro was still known as Palestra Italia, the home shirt colour was green. The first home kit was an improvised dark green shirt, with white shorts and green stockings. Cruzeiro used this kit in their first professional game on 3 April 1921, in the Prado Mineiro Stadium, with a 2–0 win over the Villa Nova/Palmeiras combined team, of Nova Lima. In 1928 the shirt became a lighter tone of green, with a white neck design and red cuffs. The shorts continued to be white, but the green stockings now had red and white details, similar to that of the Italian flag. This particular uniform was used up until 1940. The light green color of the shirt would later give the team the nickname "periquito", Portuguese for parakeet. In 1940 there was a big change to the shirt. The shirt began to feature horizontal stripes, with the club crest in the center. This was the shirt used to win the 1940 Campeonato da Cidade – now known as the Campeonto Mineiro – after the club had been unable to win the tournament for ten years. The club also began to be called "tricolor" instead of "periquito".

In 1942 Cruzeiro played one game under the name Ypiranga, and for this game a blue shirt with a central horizontal stripe was used. In 1943 Cruzeiro played its first game under its current name. The shirt used then was an all blue shirt with a large white v-neck (scapular) design. The shorts and stockings were white. In 1950, due to bad stadium lighting, Cruzeiro began to use an all-white shirt during night games. The shirt, which featured blue details and blue shorts and white stockings, was used for nine years. In 1956, Cruzeiro used, for a short while, a new shirt that was made up of white and blue horizontal stripes. The uniform was not used in many games. There was a change to the shirt in 1959; the shirt became all blue, a design that would influence later shirts. In the 1959 shirt, instead of using its normal crest Cruzeiro simply used the five stars, in the crest, loose on the shirt. The shirt made its debut in the Estádio dos Tecelões, in a friendly match against Renascença, on 19 September.

In 1984 Cruzeiro had the first ever company logo on its shirt; it was the shirt manufacturer's logo, which was Topper. In the same year Cruzeiro had its first shirt sponsor, Medradao. Medradao was only used on the away shirts

Crest

The first Palestra Itália crest was a rhombus whose top half was red and bottom half was green (both colors of the Italian flag). In the center of the crest was a white circle with the letters P and I inside it. The following year, 1922, the club's crest maintained its rhombus shape, but was now completely white, with the letter P, S and I, inscribed within it in green. In 1923, the crest lost its rhombus shape and instead just had the green letters S, P and I. From 1928 to 1939 the crest was identical to the first crest in 1921. Just one year later the crest became a little different: the top half was green and the bottom half was red, similar to the crests from 1921 and 1929–1939, but instead of green letters in its center, it now had the letters S, P and I in yellow.

The crest introduced in 1940 would be the last for Palestra, because the club would soon become Cruzeiro. Cruzeiro's first crest was introduced in 1950 and was very simple: a blue circle, with a white border, inside of which were five white stars, positioned to look like the Southern Cross. This first crest was used for over nine years, until 1959. In 1959 the crest changed, now with a white border around the crest with the words "-CRUZEIRO ESPORTE CLUBE-BELO HORIZONTE" in blue. This version of the crest was used until 1996, making it the longest-used crest by Cruzeiro. In the same year, Cruzeiro removed BELO HORIZONTE from the crest; this format was used until 2005. In 2006 to honor its successful 2003 season, a crown was added on top of the crest, to symbolize the triple crown.

Cruzeiro has not always used its official crest on its shirt. In 1959, instead of using its crest, the club opted to simply put the five stars from the Southern Cross on its shirt. This was done until 2000, when the actual crest was again used. In 2002 and in part of 2003 the loose stars were used. Part way through 2003 a new shirt that contained the actual crest was introduced, but instead of just using the regular crest the shirt featured two Copa Libertadores trophies on top of the crest. In 2004 a similar design was used, but now featured a crown, symbolic of the Triple Crown on top of the two trophies. Since 2007 the club has used the "loose stars" design on home shirts. None of these designs actually became the official club crest.

Anthem
The club's anthem, Hino ao Campeão, was written by Jadir Ambrósio in 1966, in homage to the team of his heart. He never meant for it to become the official anthem, but when fans started hearing it they liked it enough to adapt it as the new anthem.

Mascot
Cartoonist Fernando Pieruccetti, more popularly known as "Mangabeira", created the club's mascot, a raposa (Portuguese for fox) in the 1940s, as he did for other football clubs from Minas Gerais state league. Mangabeira took inspiration from the club's ex-president, Mario Grosso. "He was a director who let no one trick him. He was sly, agile, intelligent and skillful like a fox." In the 2000s, Cruzeiro has made the Raposão (Big Fox) its biggest mascot, appearing at all home games and cheering with the crowd while wearing the club's colors. In 2010, Raposão won Rede Globo's Competição de Mascotes (Mascot Competition), held in their Sunday sports show Esporte Espetacular. The program united 20 mascots from the biggest Brazilian teams and had them competing in series of challenges. Raposão won all of the events and was crowned as Brazil's Best Mascot.

In 2010, Cruzeiro introduced a "junior mascot", named "Raposinho" (Little Fox), a smaller version of "Raposão".

Presidents

 * Aurélio Noce – 1921–22
 * Alberto Noce – 1923–24
 * Américo Gasparini – 1925–26, 1928
 * Antonio Falci – 1927, 1929–30
 * Braz Pelegrino – 1927–28
 * Lidio Lunardi – 1931–32
 * José Viana de Souza – 1933
 * Miguel Perrela – 1933–36
 * Romeo de Paoli – 1936
 * Osvaldo Pinto Coelho – 1936–40
 * Ennes Cyro Poni – 1941–42
 * João Fantoni – 1942
 * Wilson Saliba – 1942
 * Mario Torneli – 1942
 * Mário Grosso – 1942–47
 * Fernando Tamietti – 1947, 1950
 * Antônio Cunha Lobo – 1947–49
 * Antônio Alves Simões – 1949
 * Manoel F. Campos – 1950
 * Divino Ramos – 1951
 * José Greco – 1952–53, 1955
 * Wellington Armanelli – 1954
 * José Francisco Lemos Filho – 1954
 * Eduardo S. Bambirra – 1955–56
 * Manoel A. de Carvalho – 1957–58
 * Antonio Braz Lopes Pontes – 1959–60
 * Felicio Brandi – 1961–82
 * Carmine Furletti – 1983–84
 * Benito Masci – 1985–90
 * Salvador Masci – 1990
 * César Masci – 1991–94
 * Zezé Perrella – 1995–2002
 * Alvimar de Oliveira Costa – 2003–08
 * Zezé Perrella – 2009–11
 * Gilvan Tavares – 2012–17
 * Wagner Pires de Sá – 2018–19
 * José Dalai Rocha – 2019–20
 * Sérgio Santos Rodrigues – 2020–23
 * Lidson Potsch – 2024–

Former coaches

 * 🇧🇷 Matturio Fabbi (1928–31)
 * 🇧🇷 Rizzo (1932)
 * 🇧🇷 Matturio Fabbi (1932–35)
 * 🇧🇷 Nello Nicolai (1935–37)
 * 🇧🇷 Ninão (1937)
 * 🇧🇷 Matturio Fabbi (1938–39)
 * 🇧🇷 Bengala (1939–43)
 * 🇧🇷 Ninão (1943–44)
 * 🇧🇷 Bengala (1944)
 * 🇧🇷 Nello Nicolai (1946)
 * 🇧🇷 Bengala (1946–47)
 * 🇧🇷 Niginho (1948–49)
 * 🇺🇾 Ricardo Diéz (1953)
 * 🇧🇷 Niginho (1953–55)
 * 🇧🇷 Bengala (1955–56)
 * 🇧🇷 Ayrton Moreira (1957)
 * 🇧🇷 Gérson dos Santos (1957)
 * 🇧🇷 Danilo Alvim (1958)
 * 🇧🇷 Gérson dos Santos (1958–59)
 * 🇧🇷 Ninão (1959)
 * 🇧🇷 Niginho (1959–61)
 * 🇧🇷 Gérson dos Santos (1962)
 * 🇧🇷 Niginho (1962–63)
 * 🇧🇷 Ayrton Moreira (1964–67)
 * 🇧🇷 Orlando Fantoni (1967–68)
 * 🇧🇷 Hilton Chaves (1968–69)
 * 🇧🇷 Gérson dos Santos (1969–70)
 * 🇧🇷 Hilton Chaves (1970)
 * 🇦🇷 Filpo Núñez (1970)
 * 🇧🇷 Hilton Chaves (1970–71)
 * 🇧🇷 Orlando Fantoni (1971–72)
 * 🇧🇷 Yustrich (1972)
 * 🇧🇷 Hilton Chaves (1972–75)
 * 🇧🇷 Zezé Moreira (1975–77)
 * 🇧🇷 Yustrich (1977)
 * 🇧🇷 Aymoré Moreira (1977–78)
 * 🇧🇷 Procópio (1978)
 * 🇧🇷 Hilton Chaves (1979–80)
 * 🇧🇷 Procópio (1981)
 * 🇧🇷 Yustrich (1982)
 * 🇧🇷 Orlando Fantoni (1983)
 * 🇧🇷 Hilton Chaves (1983–84)
 * 🇧🇷 Procópio (1986)
 * 🇧🇷 Carlos Alberto Silva (1986–87)
 * 🇧🇷 Jair Pereira (1987–88)
 * 🇧🇷 Ênio Andrade (1989–90)
 * 🇧🇷 Carbone (1990)
 * 🇧🇷 Ênio Andrade (1991–92)
 * 🇧🇷 Jair Pereira (1992)
 * 🇧🇷 Pinheiro (1993)
 * 🇧🇷 Carlos Alberto Silva (1993–94)
 * 🇧🇷 Zé Maurício (1993–94)
 * 🇧🇷 Ênio Andrade (1994)
 * 🇧🇷 Palhinha (1994)
 * 🇧🇷 Nelinho (1994)
 * 🇧🇷 Ênio Andrade (1995)
 * 🇧🇷 Jair Pereira (1995)
 * 🇧🇷 Levir Culpi (1996)
 * 🇧🇷 P. Autuori (1 March 1997–30 June 97)
 * 🇧🇷 Levir Culpi (1998–99)
 * 🇧🇷 Paulo Autuori (1999–00)
 * 🇧🇷 Marco Aurélio (2000)
 * 🇧🇷 Felipão (1 July 2000 – 30 June 2001)
 * 🇧🇷 PC Carpegiani (1 May 2001 – 6 Aug 2001)
 * 🇧🇷 Marco Aurélio (2001–02)
 * 🇧🇷 Vanderlei Luxemburgo (2002–03)
 * 🇧🇷 E. Leão (5 May 2004 – 29 July 2004)
 * 🇧🇷 Marco Aurélio (2004)
 * 🇧🇷 Levir Culpi (1 Jan 2005 – 30 June 2005)
 * 🇧🇷 PC Gusmão (5 July 2005 – 14 Aug 2006)
 * 🇧🇷 Oswaldo de Oliveira (2006)
 * 🇧🇷 P. Autuori (4 Dec 2006 – 1 May 2007)
 * 🇧🇷 D. Júnior (8 May 2007 – 2 Dec 2007)
 * 🇧🇷 A. Batista (1 Jan 2008 – 3 June 2010)
 * 🇧🇷 Cuca (8 June 2010 – 19 June 2011)
 * 🇧🇷 J. Santana (20 June 2011 – 2 Sept 2011)
 * 🇧🇷 E. Ávila (4 Sept 2011 – 25 Sept 2011)
 * 🇧🇷 V. Mancini (26 Sept 2011 – 10 May 2012)
 * 🇧🇷 Celso Roth (15 May 2012 – 2 Dec 2012)
 * 🇧🇷 M. Oliveira (3 Dec 2012 – 2 June 2015)
 * 🇧🇷 V. Luxemburgo (2 June 2015 – 31 Aug 2015)
 * 🇧🇷 Mano Menezes (1 Sept 2015 – 6 Dec 2015)
 * 🇧🇷 Deivid (10 Dec 2015 – 25 April 2016)
 * 🇵🇹 Paulo Bento (11 May 2016 – 26 July 2016)
 * 🇧🇷 Mano Menezes (27 July 2016 – 8 Aug 2019)
 * 🇧🇷 Rogerio Ceni (13 Aug 2019 – 26 Sept 2019)
 * 🇧🇷 Abel Braga (27 Sept 2019 – 29 Nov 2019)
 * 🇧🇷 A. Batista (29 Nov 2019 – 15 Mar 2020)
 * 🇧🇷 Enderson Moreira (18 Mar 2020 – 8 Sept 2020)
 * 🇧🇷 Ney Franco (9 Sept 2020 – 11 Oct 2020)
 * 🇧🇷 Felipão (15 Oct 2020 – 25 Jan 2021)
 * 🇧🇷 Felipe Conceição (30 Jan 2021 – 9 Jun 2021)
 * 🇧🇷 Mozart (10 Jun 2021 – 30 Jul 2021)
 * 🇧🇷 V. Luxemburgo (3 Aug 2021 – 28 Dec 2021)
 * 🇺🇾 Paulo Pezzolano (3 Jan 2022 – 19 Mar 2023)
 * 🇵🇹 Pepa (20 Mar 2023 – 29 Aug 2023)
 * 🇧🇷 Zé Ricardo (5 Set 2023 – 12 Nov 2023)
 * 🇧🇷 P. Autuori (14 Nov 2023 – 6 Dec 2023)
 * 🇦🇷 Nicolás Larcamón (20 Dec 2023 – 8 April 2024)
 * 🇧🇷 Fernando Seabra (9 April 2024 –)

Most appearances
Roberto Perfumo, with 138 matches, was the non-Brazilian with the most appearances for the club, this was recently changed however as Ariel Cabral was awarded this record with 200 appearances for the club.

The player with the most appearances for Cruzeiro is Fábio with a stunning record of 800 appearances, having been with the team since 2005, beating former midfielder Zé Carlos, with 619 appearances, between 1965 and 1977. In third place on that list is 1971's Bola de Ouro Winner, "The Prince" Dirceu Lopes, while the fourth place belongs to former Brazilian international and 1970 FIFA World Cup champion Wilson Piazza. The fifth overall player, and second goalkeeper with the most appearances for Cruzeiro is the notorious Raul Plassman, who played a total of 557 games with the team. The non-Brazilian with the most appearances for the club is the Argentine Roberto Perfumo who made 138 appearances for the club between 1971 and 1974.

Top goalscorers
Brazilian hall-of-famer and 1970 FIFA World Cup winner Tostão has scored the most goals for Cruzeiro, 249 between 1963 and 1972, having appeared on 378 matches for Cruzeiro (12th overall). He beats Dirceu Lopes by 25 goals on that list, which also has old-timer Niginho (207 goals) closing the top 3, being the only ones with over 200 goals for Cruzeiro. Ninão holds the record for goals scored in a single match: 10 in Cruzeiro's 14–0 win over Alves Nogueira during Campeonato da Cidade on 17 June 1928. Nelinho holds the record for most goals scored from penalties: 38; and the record for goals scored from fouls: 42. Walter Montillo's 39 goals make him the non-Brazilian with the most goals for Cruzeiro, a record that would belong to Bolivia national football team vice-captain and striker Marcelo Moreno with 48 goals or Spanish 1930's striker Fernando Carazo, with 44 goals, had they not become Brazilian nationals.

Others

 * Copa dos Campeões Mineiros (2): 1991, 1999
 * Torneio Início (8): 1929, 1938, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1948 e 1966

City

 * Copa Belo Horizonte (1): 1960

Trebles and doubles
Trebles – Domestic Triple Crown
 * State, Cup and League: 2003¹

Doubles – Domestic Double
 * State and League: 1966
 * State and Cup: 1996
 * State and League: 2014
 * State and Cup: 2018

– Continental Double
 * State and Supercopa Sudamericana: 1992
 * State and Copa Libertadores: 1997

Other featured campaigns

 * Intercontinental Cup
 * Runners-up (2): 1976, 1997
 * Copa Libertadores de América:
 * Runners-up (2): 1977, 2009
 * Third place (2): 1967, 1975
 * Campeonato Brasileiro Série A:
 * Runners-up (5): 1969, 1974, 1975, 1998, 2010
 * Third place (5): 1973, 1989, 1995, 2000, 2008
 * Fourth place (2): 1968, 2009
 * Copa do Brasil
 * Runners-up (2): 1998, 2014
 * Semi-finalist (3): 2005, 2016, 2019
 * Supercopa Sudamericana:
 * Runners-up (2): 1988 and 1996
 * Supercopa Masters:
 * Runners-up (1): 1992
 * Campeonato Mineiro:
 * Runners-up (31): 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925,1927, 1932, 1933, 1936, 1938, 1950, 1954, 1955, 1962, 1970, 1971, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2013, 2017, 2022, 2024

Grounds and facilities
Cruzeiro's first stadium was the Estádio do Prado Mineiro, which belonged to the Federação Mineira de Futebol (FMF). The club's first game at the stadium was 2–0 win over a Villa Nova/Palmeiras combine team from Nova Lima on 3 April 1921. Cruzeiro would use the stadium until 1923 when the club built its own stadium, Estádio do Barro Preto. On 23 July 1923, Cruzeiro debuted at the stadium in a 2–2 tie with Flamengo. In 1945, the stadium went through renovations and would become at that time the largest stadium in the state with a capacity of 15,000 and later on would become known as Estádio Juscelino Kubitscheck (or Estádio JK). Cruzeiro would use the stadium until 1965, when the Mineirão was opened. In 1983, the stadium was torn down and one of the club's social clubs (Sede Campestre) was built there.

Since 1965, Cruzeiro play their home games at Estádio Governador Magalhães Pinto, often referred to as just Mineirão in Belo Horizonte, MG. Cruzeiro shares the stadium with rivals Atlético Mineiro. The stadium does not belong to Cruzeiro, rather it belongs to the state of Minas Gerais (through a land grant from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) and is administrated by Minas Arena, a private company, on lease from the state since 2013. The stadium, which was built in 1963, had an original capacity of about 130,000, but over the years that capacity has been reduced, and currently it seats 64,800. Named after former Minas Gerais governor José de Magalhães Pinto, it took over 4,000 workers to build the stadium. The period after the stadium's inauguration is often called Era Mineirão ("Mineirão Era"), which saw Cruzeiro gain national and international prominence. Cruzeiro also holds the attendance record at the stadium, when 132,834 spectators watched Cruzeiro beat Villa Nova in the 1997 Campeonato Mineiro final.

Cruzeiro have had plans to build a new stadium, especially under president Alvimar de Oliveira Costa's tenure. However, the state of Minas asked Cruzeiro to stay at the stadium, and after president Zezé Perrella came to the presidency in 2009, plans for a new stadium virtually disappeared.

The Mineirão was selected as a host stadium for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, with renovations beginning on 25 June 2010, and projected to be completed by December 2012. After the stadiums closing, Cruzeiro began playing home games at the Arena do Jacaré and Ipatingão stadiums, both outside the city of Belo Horizonte. Independência stadium is also being renovated and Cruzeiro will start playing homes games there in 2011 until the Mineirão is ready in 2012.

The club has private ownership of other facilities though, including two training facilities (Toca da Raposa I, which serves the youth division and Toca da Raposa II for the senior squad), an administrative headquarters and two social club facilities. Cruzeiro has often been praised for having one of the leading infrastructure systems in Brazil.

Administration and finances
Cruzeiro used to be a nonprofit organization, where the real owner are sócios (literally, "partners") or members (who pay an annual fee), in return, sócios receive benefits from the club, such as access to club's properties and tickets, as well as a right to vote for the next club officials. This bylaw lasted from the club's foundation in 1921 until late 2021, when Wagner Pires de Sá's run as club president led to the club to declare bankruptcy.

Wagner Pires de Sá's run as club president was filled with corruption. This led Cruzeiro to stop paying its players, leading to the club's first relegation in 2019. Over the next two years, Cruzeiro played the second division while still under the sócios program. This changed in December 2021, when the former footballer Ronaldo, who started his professional career in Cruzeiro, announced he would be the owner of Cruzeiro's football department.

title: Cruzeiro Esporte Clube


text:
Alfréd Hajós

Alfréd Hajós (1 February 1878 – 12 November 1955) was a Hungarian swimmer, football (soccer) player, referee, manager, and career architect. He was the first modern Olympic swimming champion and the first Olympic champion of Hungary. Formerly excelling in track including discus and hurdles, he was part of the first National European football/soccer team fielded by Hungary in 1902, later serving as a referee as well as the manager and coach of the national football team.

Biography
Hajós was born in Budapest, Hungary, as Arnold Guttmann, to a family of Jewish heritage. He was 13 years old when he felt compelled to learn swimming after his father drowned in the Danube River. He took the name Hajós (sailor in Hungarian) for his athletic career because it was a Hungarian name.

In 1896, Hajós was an architecture student in Hungary when the Athens Games took place. He was allowed to compete, but permission from the university to miss class was difficult to obtain. When he returned to the Dean of the Polytechnical University, the dean did not congratulate Hajós on his Olympic success, but instead said: "Your medals are of no interest to me, but I am eager to hear your replies in your next examination."

Olympic swimmer
At the 1896 Games, the swimming events were held in the Mediterranean Sea in the cold Bay of Zea at Phaleron, requiring athletes to battle the elements. The 18-year-old Hajós won his two gold medals in extremely cold conditions in April (the water temperature was about 55 °F, or 13 degrees Celsius) with 12-foot (4 m) waves crashing down on him. Impressively, he took gold medals in two of the four swimming events, winning both the 100-metre freestyle with a time of 1:22.2, and the 1,200-metre freestyle in 18:22.1. He was the youngest winner in Athens. His brother, Henrik Hajós, later won a gold medal in 4x250 m Freestyle swimming at the 1906 Olympic Games in Athens.

Prior to the 1896 Athens Olympics, Hajós was the 100 metre freestyle European swimming champion in 1895 and 1896.

Track and football (soccer)
A versatile athlete, he won Hungary's 100 metre sprint championship in 1898, as well as the National 400 metre hurdles and discus titles. He also played as a forward in Hungary's national football (soccer) championship between 1901 and 1903, and on 12 October 1902, he again went down in history as one of the eleven football (soccer) athletes who played in the first international match played by the Hungarian national team, captaining his side in a 0–5 loss to Austria in Vienna. Between 1897 and 1904 he was also a football (soccer) referee, and during 1906 he was the coach of Hungary's national football (soccer) team, leading the nation in three games, achieving a record of two draws and 1 win.

Silver medal
In 1924, Hajós, an architect specializing in sport facilities, entered the art competitions at the Paris Olympic Games. His plan for a stadium, devised together with Dezső Lauber (who played tennis in the 1908 Summer Olympics), was awarded the silver medal; the jury did not award a gold medal in the competition. Thus making him one of only two Olympians ever to have won medals in both sport (swimming) and art (architecture) Olympic competitions.

Career
Graduating from the Technical University of Budapest in 1899, he originally had a partner, but became independent after the first World War. From 1948, he was technical advisor to the Design Office for Building Construction and was involved in the reconstruction of large public buildings in Budapest and Hungary. The best known sports facility designed by Hajós is the Alfréd Hajós National Swimming Stadium built on Margitsziget (Margaret Island) in the Danube in Budapest, which was built in 1930, and used for the 1958, 2006 and 2010 European Aquatics Championships, and the 2006 FINA Men's Water Polo World Cup.

Honors
In 1953, the International Olympic Committee awarded him the Olympic diploma of merit. He is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and in 1981 was also made a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. In 2010, Hajós posthumously was awarded the Ybl Miklós Prize, the greatest honor bestowed upon architects in Hungary.

Buildings
His first designs were in Art Nouveau and eclectic style, later he turned to modernism and was influenced by Italian styles.

 * Hotel Aranybika, Debrecen
 * Gymnasium of Janko Francisci - Rimavský, (Levoča, 1913)
 * Protestant Church Centre, Budapest
 * Újpest FC's UTE Stadium, Újpest, Megyeri ut (1922)
 * Swimming Stadium, Budapest, Margitsziget (today it bears his name)
 * Millenáris Sportpálya, Budapest XIV
 * Sports ground, Miskolc
 * Sports ground, Pápa
 * Sports ground, Szeged
 * Sports ground, Kaposvár
 * Girls' School (Hungarian: III. állam polgári leányiskola Pozsonyban, Slovak: III. štátna meštianska škola dievčenská v Bratislave) 1914, Bratislava
 * Népkert Vigadó, Miskolc, Népkert
 * Swimbath, Szeged (Ligetfürdő, 1930)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Alfréd Hajós


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Clube Atlético Mineiro

Clube Atlético Mineiro, commonly known as Atlético Mineiro and colloquially as Galo (, "Rooster"), is a professional football club of Belo Horizonte, the capital city of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The team competes in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, the first level of Brazilian football, as well as in the Campeonato Mineiro, the top tier state league of Minas Gerais.

Clube Atlético Mineiro, the oldest active football club in Minas Gerais, was founded on 25 March 1908 by twenty-two students from Belo Horizonte. Despite having upper-class founders, the club immediately opened its doors to players of every social class, establishing itself as a "people's club" and becoming the second most supported club on the state and the eighth most supported club in Brazil. The club's mascot, the rooster, has been strongly associated with Atlético since its introduction in the 1930s. Over the years, the word Galo (Portuguese for "rooster") became a common nickname for the club itself. The team's regular home kit comprises black-and-white striped shirts, black shorts and white socks.

Atlético has won the Campeonato Mineiro a record 49 times. At the national level, the club has won the Campeonato Brasileiro three times, in 1937, 1971 and 2021 and finished second on five occasions. It has also won Copa do Brasil twice and the Supercopa do Brasil and the Copa dos Campeões Brasileiros once each. In international club football, Atlético has won the Copa Libertadores and the Recopa Sudamericana once each, and a record two Copa CONMEBOL; the team has also reached three other continental finals. The club has also competed in other sports throughout its history, with the futsal department becoming especially notable.

The club plays its home games at the Arena MRV, which has an operational capacity of over 46,000 spectators. Arena MRV's construction began on 20 April 2020, its inauguration was on 15 April 2023, and its first official match took place on 27 August 2023. Atlético holds a strong local rivalry with Cruzeiro, called the Clássico Mineiro. The club also holds a local rivalry with América Mineiro and an interstate one with Flamengo. Atlético has the sixth most valuable brand in Brazil, worth BRL515.5 million (€143 million) as of 2016, the 8th largest football crowd in Brazil and ranks seventh in the country in terms of turnover, generating R$244.6 million (€62.2 million) in 2015.

On 1 November 2023, it was announced that Galo Holding completed the purchase of controlling interest (75%) of the club's SAF. Of a total of 913 million reais paid by new investors, a third of the amount was used to pay debts.

Early years and achievements (1908–1949)

Clube Atlético Mineiro was formed on 25 March 1908, by a group of twenty-two students from Belo Horizonte, who decided the club's name would be Athletico Mineiro Foot Ball Club. The club's first match was played against Sport Club Futebol on March 21, 1909; Atlético won 3–0, with the first goal scored by Aníbal Machado. In 1913, the club's name was officially changed to Clube Atlético Mineiro, and in the following year Atlético won the Taça Bueno Brandão, the first competition ever held in the state of Minas Gerais. In 1915, the club won the inaugural edition of the Campeonato Mineiro, the state league of Minas Gerais. The competition was then organised by the Liga Mineira de Sports Athléticos, which would later become the Federação Mineira de Futebol (FMF).

Atlético won the league again in 1926, led by striker Mário de Castro. In 1927, forwards Said and Jairo joined Castro to form an attacking partnership nicknamed the Trio Maldito ("Unholy Trio"), which guided Atlético to another state league triumph. In 1929, the club played its first international encounter, against Portuguese club Vitória de Setúbal, winning 3–1 in a match played at the Presidente Antônio Carlos Stadium. The ground had opened earlier that year and would become the club's home for the following two decades.

Atlético won the state league in 1931 and 1932, before becoming a professional club in 1933. After another Campeonato Mineiro triumph in 1936, Atlético won the 1937 Campeonato Brasileiro, the inaugural edition of the national league. The competition was organised by the Federação Brasileira de Foot-Ball, a federation for professional clubs that would later merge into the Brazilian Sports Confederation (CBD). The Copa dos Campeões Estaduais was contested by the 1936 state league champions from Minas Gerais (Atlético), Rio de Janeiro (Fluminense), São Paulo (Portuguesa) and Espírito Santo (Rio Branco). Atlético defeated the latter 5–1 in the final match, played at the Antônio Carlos stadium. Guará rose as the club's top player during that period, and the interstate title was followed by two more Campeonato Mineiro victories, in 1938 and 1939.

Success continued in the 1940s, with a squad that included Carlyle, Lucas Miranda, Nívio and goalkeeper Kafunga. The club was dominant in the state as it won the league in 1941, 1942, 1946, 1947 and 1949. Although América had been Atlético's long-standing adversary, a new rivalry started to develop with Cruzeiro in the 1940s, as it became Galo's main challenger during this period.

European tour and the Mineirão era (1950–1969)
In 1950, the club's home moved from the Antônio Carlos to the newer and larger Estádio Independência. The season saw another Campeonato Mineiro triumph and the club's first European tour, in which it played ten games in five countries. The excursion happened at a time when there were neither regular national competitions in Brazil nor continental ones in South America, and followed soon after the traumatic Maracanazo. The tour and Atlético's results, many of which achieved under adverse weather conditions and snow, were seen by national sports media as a historic achievement for Brazilian football itself. The team, captained by Zé do Monte, was dubbed the Campeões do Gelo ("Ice Champions"), a title that is remembered in the club's official anthem. The club's success in the state competition continued in the 1950s, a decade that saw the rise of forward Ubaldo and five consecutive Campeonato Mineiro victories from 1952 to 1956. After another state league title in 1958, Atlético took part in the inaugural edition of the Taça Brasil in the following year, reaching the third round. The tournament, the country's first annual nationwide competition, was a cup contested between state league champions, originally created by the CBD to select Brazil's entrants in the newly formed Copa Libertadores. In the 1960s, Atlético won the Campeonato Mineiro twice, in 1962 and 1963, but failed to advance to the later stages of the Taça Brasil. Mineirão, Belo Horizonte's new stadium, opened in 1965 and immediately became the club's home. It was in the mid-1960s when the rivalry with Cruzeiro became the main one in the state. In 1967, another national-level competition was created by the CBD, the Torneio Roberto Gomes Pedrosa. It included more clubs than the Taça Brasil, but Atlético did not finish in the top-four in any of its editions in the decade. In the second half of the 1960s, highlights came in the form of friendlies against national sides. In 1968, Atlético, representing the Brazilian national team, defeated European Championship runners-up Yugoslavia 3–2 at the Mineirão; the following year, the Seleção itself, which would become champions of the 1970 FIFA World Cup, was defeated 2–1.

National success and state dominance (1970–1989)

With the arrival of Telê Santana as the club's head coach in 1970, Galo broke Cruzeiro's sequence and won its first state league title in the Mineirão, also finishing third in the last Roberto Gomes Pedrosa. In 1971, captained by midfielder Oldair and with World Cup-winning forward Dario as the league's top goalscorer, Atlético won the Campeonato Brasileiro. It was the first edition of the competition, also known as the Brasileirão, which replaced both the Taça Brasil and the Roberto Gomes Pedrosa as the new national championship. Atlético played a final group stage against São Paulo and Botafogo, defeating the former 1–0 at the Mineirão and the latter 1–0 at the Maracanã. The victory also secured the club's first participation in an official continental competition, the 1972 Copa Libertadores, in which it did not advance past the first group stage. After four trophyless years, Atlético won the state league again in 1976 and finished third in the Campeonato Brasileiro. That season saw the emergence of a golden generation of players, formed in the club's youth academies under coach Barbatana. Reinaldo, Toninho Cerezo, Éder, Luizinho, Paulo Isidoro and João Leite, players who represented Brazil at international level, were central to the team that took Atlético to six consecutive state league victories between 1978 and 1983, and to good results in the Série A. Atlético came second in the 1977 Brasileirão, losing the final to São Paulo in a penalty shootout at the Mineirão, despite remaining undefeated for the entire season. Reinaldo, the league's top scorer in that season with an average of 1.56 goals per match, was banned from the final. By his account, this was because of his insistence on celebrating his goals by raising his fist, a political symbol that opposed the Brazilian military government of the time. In 1978, Atlético reached the Copa Libertadores semi-finals and won the Copa dos Campeões Brasileiros, a tournament organised by the CBD between past winners of the Brasileirão. In a repetition of the previous year's Brasileiro decisive match, the opponent in the final of this competition was São Paulo, with Atlético this time winning a penalty shootout.

In 1980, after having the best record in the first stages of the Brasileirão, Atlético lost to Flamengo in a controversial final of the competition. Three Galo players were bizarrely sent off, among them Reinaldo, who received a straight red card after scoring twice. The team was then eliminated from the following year's Copa Libertadores undefeated, in another decisive match marked by controversy: a play-off against Flamengo that ended after 37 minutes, following the sendings-off of five Atlético players. During the 1980s, the club participated in and won international friendly competitions, such as the Amsterdam Tournament and the Tournoi de Paris. Atlético had the best statistic league records of the 1980, 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1987 Brasileirão seasons, but did not win the title, falling in the finals or semi-finals of those editions. In the second half of the decade, the club continued its success in the state, winning the Campeonato Mineiro in 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1989. Atlético was one of Brazil's top sides of the 1980s, providing many players to the Brazilian national team, being dominant at state level and having good performances in the Brasileiro, but a tendency to lose in its final knockout stages prevented a new title in this competition.

Continental efforts and financial turmoil (1990–2009)
In the following decade, Atlético won the state league in 1991 and first saw success at continental level in 1992, when it won the inaugural Copa CONMEBOL. The team, managed by Procópio Cardoso, defeated Paraguay's Olimpia in the finals to claim its first official international title. As champion of that competition, the club took part in the 1993 Copa de Oro, in which it eliminated local rival Cruzeiro in the semi-finals but eventually lost to Argentina's Boca Juniors. After finishing fourth in the 1994 Brasileirão, the following year saw the club win the state league and reach the finals of the Copa CONMEBOL for a second time. This one ended in defeat to Argentine team Rosario Central on penalties, after Atlético won the first leg by 4–0 and lost the second one by the same score. In 1996, Atlético participated in the Copa Masters CONMEBOL, a competition between past winners of the Copa CONMEBOL that was played in Cuiabá; Atlético eliminated Rosario Central in the semi-finals but lost to São Paulo in the final match. The team also finished third in that year's Brasileiro and fourth in the following edition, falling in the semi-finals of both seasons. Another triumph came in the 1997 Copa CONMEBOL, when an Atlético team that included Marques and Cláudio Taffarel defeated Argentina's Lanús in the finals, and won the trophy for a second time. In 1999, after another Campeonato Mineiro title, a Galo side led by Marques and Guilherme, the top scorer in the league, reached the Série A finals for the fourth time, but lost to Corinthians. Despite international success and good performances in the Série A, the decade was marked by bad club administration by Atlético's presidents and deteriorating finances, which made the club one of the most indebted in Brazilian football.

In 2000, Atlético won the Campeonato Mineiro, reached the Copa Libertadores quarter-finals and the semi-finals of Copa Mercosur, but had a bad season in the national league, the Copa João Havelange. The following year, despite a good performance in the Brasileirão with a squad that included Marques, Guilherme and Gilberto Silva, the team was eliminated in the competition's semi-finals, eventually finishing in fourth place. Atlético then finished in the upper part of the national league table in the following two seasons, but in 2004 it barely escaped relegation. In 2005 the club was demoted to the Série B, the second level of the Brasileirão.

On the following year with Levir Culpi as head coach, the club won promotion at the first attempt as Série B champion in 2006, returning to the Série A for the 2007 season. That year, Atlético won the Campeonato Mineiro, its first trophy in seven years, and finished eighth in the national league. Alexandre Kalil was chosen as the club's new president in 2008, and tried to improve its finances and status. In 2009, with Diego Tardelli in good form, Galo led the Brasileirão for eight of the thirty-eight rounds, before eventually finishing in seventh place. Despite some highlights at the beginning and end of the decade, the 2000s were not a successful period in the club's history, again marked by bad administration and frequent managerial changes.

Resurgence and international success (2010-2017)
The team won its 40th Campeonato Mineiro in 2010, but finished 13th in the Série A. After an unsuccessful year in 2011, coming close to relegation, the arrival of Cuca as head coach at the end of that season marked the beginning of another successful era for the club. The club moved back to the Independência in 2012, as the Mineirão was closed for renovation, and won the Campeonato Mineiro undefeated. The arrival of Ronaldinho in the middle of the season was an important event for the club, which eventually finished as runner-up in the Série A and earned a spot in the following year's Copa Libertadores.

Diego Tardelli and Gilberto Silva returned to the club in 2013 and joined Ronaldinho, Jô and Bernard towards another Campeonato Mineiro triumph. The quarter-finals of that season's Copa Libertadores saw an iconic moment for Atlético, when a penalty kick was awarded to Mexican Club Tijuana in injury time. It would have meant elimination if it had been scored, but was saved by Atlético's goalkeeper Victor with his left foot. The save, according to sports commentators and fans, represented the "kicking out" of the club's historic "jinx". Atlético then defeated Argentina's Newell's Old Boys in the semi-finals and Olimpia in the finals, both on penalties, after losing both first legs by 2–0 and winning the second ones by the same score, to achieve its first Copa Libertadores title. The club's participation in the FIFA Club World Cup was unsuccessful, as Atlético failed to reach the final, losing to Moroccan hosts Raja Casablanca; Galo eventually finished in third place after defeating China's Guangzhou Evergrande.

Under Levir Culpi, who returned to the club in 2014, Atlético won its first Recopa Sudamericana, defeating Lanús for the second time in a continental final. In that season's Copa do Brasil, after trailing 0–3 on aggregate in both the quarter-finals and semi-finals (against Corinthians and Flamengo, respectively), Atlético made 4–3 comebacks and advanced. The competition's finals were the first at a national level to feature them and Atlético defeated Cruzeiro on both encounters to win its first Copa do Brasil. The club's successful run in the decade continued in 2015, when it won the Campeonato Mineiro and finished second in the Campeonato Brasileiro. In 2016, however, Atlético Mineiro ended the season without official trophies, finishing as runner-up of the Campeonato Mineiro and the Copa do Brasil, and in fourth place in the Brasileiro. The club achieved its 44th Campeonato Mineiro title in 2017.

New Golden age (2021–)
On 2 December 2021, after finishing 3rd place in the last edition of the Campeonato Brasileiro, Atlético won its second Série A title after 49 years, beating Bahia in a thrilling 2–3 comeback to take the title. Less than two weeks later, on 15 December, they beat Athletico Paranaense in the 2021 Copa do Brasil Finals after a 4–0 win at home, the largest thrash ever in a Copa do Brasil finals match, followed by a 1–2 away win to secure Galo's second Copa do Brasil trophy. On 20 February 2022, after a 2–2 draw with Flamengo, Atlético Mineiro took the 2022 Supercopa do Brasil title after a long penalty shootout, in which Galo won 8–7. On 7 April 2024, Atlético won the 2024 Campeonato Mineiro for the fifth consecutive year (2020-2024), a feat that was last achieved 42 years prior (1978–82), being the third time in the club's history.

Crest
The club's first emblem, introduced in the 1910s, consisted of a simple design of the three initials of the club's name ("CAM" for Clube Atlético Mineiro) in an oval shape in black. The first and most significant change occurred in 1922, when an edged shield format was adopted, with the letters in its upper part and black and white stripes in the lower. The crest's general appearance has been kept ever since, with only the exact format and the placement of the black and white stripes within the escutcheon changing over the decades. In the 1970s a golden star above the badge was introduced, alluding to the 1971 Série A title, which still remains. Red stars were featured on two occasions, referring to the 1978 Copa dos Campeões and the 1992 and 1997 Copa CONMEBOL victories, but these were removed in 1999.

Mascot
Atlético's mascot, a rooster, is the best known in the country. According to Kafunga, who played as goalkeeper for the club from 1935 to 1955, the "rooster" nickname was associated with Atlético because of its kit colours. In 1945, Fernando Pierucetti, known as Mangabeira, a cartoonist for the A Folha de Minas newspaper, was selected to design mascots for each of the three biggest clubs in Belo Horizonte. According to Mangabeira, Atlético's would be the rooster because the team used to play with passion and would never give up until the end of each match, like gamecocks in cockfights.

Over the years, the word galo (Portuguese for "rooster") became a cheering chant for the supporters and a nickname by which they referred to the club, an appellation that eventually spread to other football fans in the country. The nickname was incorporated into the club's official anthem, composed by Vicente Motta in 1968, whose chorus hails Atlético as a "strong and avenging rooster". In 1976, a costumed rooster mascot was introduced, to accompany players and children in the match entrance. The stadium mascot was reintroduced with a new costume in 2005, named Galo Doido ("Crazy Rooster") by the supporters.

Kits
The club's home kit has always consisted of a black-and-white vertically striped shirt, with black shorts and white or black socks. The width of the black and white stripes has varied from season to season, as has the colour of the shirt numbers, which have usually been red, black, white or yellow. Atlético's traditional away kit is all-white shirts, shorts and socks, but has had slight variations. An all-black third kit was introduced in the 2000 season, being used again in 2015. In 2008, a black-and-gold vertically striped third kit was launched to commemorate the club's centenary, featuring the first crest. Squad number 12 is retired from the club's kits, dedicated to the fans.

Since the 1981 season, the club has had its kits manufactured by sportswear corporations, the first one being Brazilian company Rainha. Since 2017, Atlético's kits are manufactured by Topper, a company which previously provided apparel for the club from 2010 to 2012. Other previous suppliers were Adidas (1983–85), Penalty (1986–90, 1992–93 and 1997–2001), Dell'erba (1991), Umbro (1994–96 and 2002–04), Diadora (2005–07), Lotto (2008–09), Lupo (2013), Puma (2014–2015) and Dryworld (2016).

In 1982, bank Credireal was Atlético's first shirt sponsor. After one sponsorless season in 1983, Precon, a construction company, appeared on the shirts in 1984 and 1985; it was replaced by Agrimisa bank in 1986. In 1987, Coca-Cola sponsored all participating clubs of Copa União, and the brand remained on Atlético's kits until 1994. The club was subsequently sponsored by TAM Airlines (1995–96), Tenda (1997–98), and had temporary deals with Fiat and Telemar in 1999. Two sponsorless years followed, before permanent deals were signed with Fiat (2002–03), MRV Engenharia (2004–07) and Fiat again in 2008. After one more season without a brand on the club's shirts, BMG, a bank that was owned by the former club president Ricardo Annes Guimarães, was the main sponsor from 2010 to 2014. MRV returned as the club's main shirt sponsor in 2015, being replaced by state-owned bank Caixa Econômica Federal in 2016.

Grounds
Atlético had its first home ground built in 1912 at Paraopeba Avenue, in downtown Belo Horizonte, across the street from América's first stadium. The club's main ground for most of its early years, however, was the Presidente Antônio Carlos stadium, which held 5,000 people; it was nicknamed Estádio de Lourdes for the quarter in which it was located. The Antônio Carlos was one of the first stadiums in Brazil to feature floodlights, and opened on 30 May 1929 with a friendly against Corinthians, won by Atlético 4–2. The following year, the stadium was visited by FIFA president Jules Rimet, who watched a night game for the first time. The stadium fell out of favor when the larger Independência was built in 1950, and remained largely unused by the first team; eventually it was sold by the club to the Belo Horizonte municipality in the 1960s. After decades of legal disputes with the municipal government, the property returned to the club in 1991. It was leased to a shopping mall in 1995, which was built in the following year where the stadium once was, across the street from Atlético's administrative headquarters. Construction for the Independência (officially Estádio Raimundo Sampaio) started in 1947 in preparation for the 1950 FIFA World Cup, during which its first match was played. Originally the property of the State Government of Minas Gerais, ownership was transferred to Sete de Setembro FC in 1965, when the Mineirão was built, and the property passed to América in 1997, when it absorbed Sete de Setembro. Before the Mineirão, the stadium was the largest in Belo Horizonte – holding up to 30,000 people – and was preferred by Atlético over the older and smaller Antônio Carlos stadium. After the Mineirão's construction, however, Atlético did not use the Estádio do Horto (as it is also known) for decades, except for a brief spell in the late 1990s. The stadium was renovated in 2012, while the Mineirão was closed, having its capacity reduced to 23,018. In that year, Atlético announced a deal with BWA Arenas, the stadium manager. The club signed a contract to use the Independência as its home ground for 10 years, but moved back to the Mineirão in 2020. Mineirão (officially Estádio Governador Magalhães Pinto) opened in 1965 and quickly became Galo's new home, as its peak capacity of over 100,000 spectators surpassed any other stadium in Belo Horizonte or in Minas Gerais. Property of the State of Minas Gerais, Mineirão was Atlético's home from its opening until its closure in 2010 for renovations prior to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The club temporarily moved to Arena do Jacaré in Sete Lagoas and subsequently to Independência in 2012. Historically the club's home ground, Atlético's most important matches have all been played at the Mineirão. After the renovation, the Mineirão has an overall capacity of 61,846.

Cidade do Galo ("Rooster City"), the club's main training facility since 2001, has been lauded as the best in Brazil and is considered one of the best in the world; it hosted the Argentina national football team at the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Other facilities owned by the club include Vila Olímpica ("Olympic Village"), the old training grounds opened in 1973 that hosted the Seleção in its preparation for the 1982 FIFA World Cup, and Labareda, a leisure and health club in Belo Horizonte. In 2015, Daniel Nepomuceno, the club president, announced that Atlético had a four-year project to build a new stadium in Belo Horizonte, with a 45,000 capacity. In 2017, the club's Deliberative Council approved the project to build the new stadium, in northeastern Belo Horizonte, named Arena MRV. The construction is projected to cost R$410 million, and expected to be inaugurated on the third quarter of 2022.

Supporters
Atlético Mineiro was founded by upper-class students, but from an early age it opened its doors to players from every social class, nationality or ethnicity, which earned it a "people's club" status in Belo Horizonte and in the state. As a result of vast popular support, the fans came to be collectively known as "A Massa" (Portuguese for "the mass"). According to a 2014 survey conducted by IBOPE and Lance!, the club is the second best-supported in Belo Horizonte and in Minas Gerais and has the eighth largest fanbase in Brazil, with over five million supporters.

Atlético has many torcidas organizadas that support the club, the oldest being Dragões da FAO, founded in 1969, and the largest and best-known being Galoucura. Other notable groups include Galö Metal, Movimento 105 Minutos and the Charanga, a brass band that plays during the club's home matches. Galoucura has historically developed alliances with other torcidas in Brazil, most notably Palmeiras's Mancha Verde and Vasco da Gama's Força Jovem. After difficult but successful comebacks in 2013 and 2014, the fans have adopted the motto "Eu acredito" ("I believe") to support the club in against-the-odds situations. Squad number 12 is retired from the club's kits and dedicated to the fans.

Atlético has had the best average attendance in nine editions of the Série A since 1972, and has the second highest all-time average attendance in Brazilian football. The club also ranks second in all-time total attendance in the national league, with more than 13 million tickets sold in 581 home matches as of the 2014 season. The second leg of the 2013 Copa Libertadores finals between Atlético and Olimpia, played at the Mineirão and attended by 58,620 people, had the highest gate receipt revenue of all time in South American football, yielding BRL14.2 million (€4.8 million at the time).

In 1999, the club introduced Galo de Prata ("Silver Rooster"), a trophy officially awarded by Atlético to sportspeople, illustrious supporters, artists, politicians, and organisations that somehow promote the club's name. Since the implementation of municipal and state laws in 2007 and 2008, Dia do Atleticano ("Atleticano Day") is officially celebrated in Belo Horizonte and Minas Gerais every year on 25 March, the day of the club's foundation. Atlético launched TV Galo in 2007, a premium television channel that provides content for fans such as interviews with players and staff, coverage of training sessions and matches, footballing news, and other themed programming. Since 2012, the club has an affiliation programme called Galo na Veia, in which supporters can become season ticket holders or pay an annual or monthly fees to buy match tickets at reduced price.

Rivalries
The local rivalry between Atlético and Cruzeiro, known as the Clássico Mineiro ("Mineiro Derby"), started years after the latter's foundation as Società Sportiva Palestra Italia in 1921. It strengthened in the 1940s and became the biggest derby in Minas Gerais in the 1960s. Atlético dominated the rivalry from its early days until the late 1950s, Cruzeiro rose in the 1960s to be a strong challenger and the 1970s had divided honours. The 1980s were favourable to Atlético, whilst the 1990s and 2000s were dominated by Cruzeiro. The 2010s have the rivals competing at an even level. The 2020s have been favourable to Atlético, partly due to its local rivals' three years in a row in relegation level of Brazilian national football. The clubs dissent over the number of matches and head-to-head record of the Clássico Mineiro, but both teams' statistics show Atlético with most wins in the encounter: 518 matches, 210 wins, 138 draws and 171 losses (as of June 2023). The only national final between the two clubs happened in the 2014 Copa do Brasil, when Atlético triumphed in a final match played at Mineirão. The Clássico Mineiro's most extreme result was a Atlético 9–2 Cruzeiro win in the 1927 Campeonato Mineiro.

The derby between Atlético and América was known as the Clássico das Multidões ("Derby of the Masses"), before Mineirão was built. America dominated the early years of the encounter, winning ten consecutive Campeonato Mineiro titles from 1916 to 1925. In the 1930s, Atlético pioneered professionalization of football in Minas Gerais, whereas América resisted against it. From that time on, Galo became the major force between the two, with América suffering a setback as a result of its internal disagreements regarding professionalism.

Atlético also holds a rivalry with Flamengo of Rio de Janeiro, with the first match between the clubs being played in 1929. Until regular national competitions were introduced in Brazilian football in 1959, however, the encounters were played at friendly level, since the clubs are from different states. The rivalry developed in the 1980s, rising from numerous tendentious events and controversial encounters between the two clubs in Campeonato Brasileiro and Copa Libertadores editions of the period. It remained through the following decades and is considered the biggest interstate rivalry in Brazilian football.

Records and statistics

João Leite holds Atlético's official appearance record, with 684 matches in all competitions. Reinaldo is the club's all-time leading goalscorer, with 255 goals, since joining the first squad in 1973. In the 1977 season, he scored 28 goals in 18 appearances, setting the club record for the most Campeonato Brasileiro goals in a season, and the league's best average goal-per-game record (1.55). Dadá Maravilha is second in total goals, with 211, and the only other Atlético player to score over 200 goals. Argentine striker Lucas Pratto is Atlético's all-time top foreign goalscorer, with 41 goals. Telê Santana is Galo's longest-serving head coach, having taken charge of the team for 434 matches during three periods in the 1970s and 1980s. Nelson Campos is the club's longest-serving president, with nine years in the office in three terms.

The first official game in which Atlético participated was against Yale for the 1915 Campeonato Mineiro, which the team won 5–0. The biggest victory ever recorded by Galo was 13–0, against Calafate in the 1927 Campeonato Mineiro. In the national league, the biggest win came against Desportiva Ferroviária – 7–1 in the 1982 season. Atlético's biggest win in the Copa do Brasil, 11–0 against Caiçara in 1991, is also the competition's record victory. The club's home attendance record – split-crowd derbies excepted – is 115,142, in a friendly against Flamengo at the Mineirão, in 1980. The record attendance in official matches is 113,749, achieved in a match against Santos for the 1983 Brasileirão. Atlético holds the Brazilian record for longest unbeaten run at home, with 54 matches from 2011 to 2013, with 44 wins and 10 draws. The signing of André from Dynamo Kyiv in 2012 is the club's most expensive purchase, costing around €8 million, while the record sale is the transfer of Bernard to Shakhtar Donetsk in 2013, which cost the Ukrainian club €25 million.

Organization and finances
As is the case for most Brazilian football clubs, Atlético Mineiro's by-law defines the club as a not-for-profit public utility organization, formed by associates (sócios). The club's administrative powers are the General Assembly, the Deliberative Council, the Board, the Fiscal Council and the Ethics and Discipline Council. The General Assembly, composed of all associates, elects the Deliberative Council among its members every three years, which in turn elects and removes the club's Board, responsible for the executive management of the club. Season ticket-holders and participants of the Galo na Veia affiliation programme, called sócios-torcedores, are not full club associates and cannot vote or be elected.

A study conducted by BDO in 2016 indicated that the club had a brand value of BRL515.5 million (€143 million), making it the eighth most valuable in Brazil. In terms of annual turnover, Atlético ranked seventh in the country in 2015, earning R$244.6 million (€62.2 million), which represented a 37 per cent increase compared to the previous year. The club has a main sponsorship deal with Caixa Econômica Federal, worth R$12.5 million (€3.2 million) annually. Its kit sponsorship deal with Dryworld, worth R$20 million (€5.1 million) per year, is the third biggest in the country. The club's gross debt as of 2015 was R$496.5 million (€126.6 million), the third largest in Brazil, with a R$11.9 million (€3 million) deficit in the same year. The club's balance sheet in that year stated it experienced operational losses, and according to a study by Itaú BBA, Atlético operates in a dangerous "financial all-in". The majority of the club's debt is owed to the Federal Government of Brazil, totaling R$286.6 million (€89.1 million); in 2015, Atlético and other clubs joined a government program for debt financing.

In popular culture
Atlético Mineiro and episodes in the club's history have appeared on films and other media. The music video for "É Uma Partida de Futebol" ("It's a Football Match"), by Brazilian rock band Skank, was filmed during a 1997 Clássico Mineiro match between Atlético and Cruzeiro; the video won three categories at the 1997 MTV Video Music Brazil awards. An Atlético match was also depicted in a Martian Manhunter comic book, by DC Comics, in 2015. The protagonist in Memories of the Desert, a 2014 Brazilian crime drama film, is a supporter of the club (as is the actor who portrayed him, Daniel de Oliveira).

A short film about goalkeeper Victor's iconic penalty-kick save against Tijuana in the 2013 Copa Libertadores was released in 2014; named A Dream You Dream Together Is Reality, it was awarded the Guirlande D'Honneur by the FICTS at the "Sport Movies & TV - Milano International FICTS Fest". In the following year, O Dia do Galo, a documentary that followed five Atlético supporters on the day of the final match of the same competition, was released in theatres as a feature film. The motion picture was one of the most watched Brazilian films of 2015, and won the Popular Jury award at the Mostra de Cinema de Tiradentes. O Imortal do Gelo, a film about the club's 1950 tour to Europe, was released in 2015. Another film called Lutar, Lutar, Lutar was released in 2021 and it focuses on the club's history and honours, while also remembering the tendentious decisions against the club in the 1980s.

Honours
Atlético Mineiro's first trophy was the Taça Bueno Brandão, won in 1914. The club was the first winner of the Campeonato Mineiro, the state league of Minas Gerais, a competition it has won a record 49 times; it has also won the Taça Minas Gerais, a state cup, on five occasions. At national level, Atlético has won the Campeonato Brasileiro three times, while finishing second on five seasons; and also won the Copa do Brasil twice, winning their second titles of both the two major national tournaments in the same year of 2021. It has also won the Copa dos Campeões Estaduais, and the Copa dos Campeões Brasileiros once each, also finishing as runner-up once in the latter. In international competitions, Atlético has won the Copa Libertadores and the Recopa Sudamericana once each, and a record two Copa CONMEBOL trophies; the club has also finished as runner-up of the Copa CONMEBOL, the Copa de Oro and the Copa Master de CONMEBOL. The club has competed in the FIFA Club World Cup once, finishing in third place. The club's most recent title is the 2023 Campeonato Mineiro.

Others

 * Taça Belo Horizonte
 * Winner (3): 1970, 1971, 1972 (Record)
 * Torneio Início
 * Winner (8): 1928, 1931, 1932, 1939, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1954
 * Champions Cup (FMF)
 * Winner (1): 1974
 * Torneio Incentivo Mineiro
 * Winner (1): 1993

City

 * Taça Bueno Brandão
 * Winner (1): 1914
 * Copa Belo Horizonte
 * Winner (1): 1959 (Record)

Team management
Atlético Mineiro's technical and medical staff is composed of permanent members in all positions, except head coach and assistant coach.

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" !Position !Name !scope=row |Head coach !scope=row |Director of football !scope=row |Football general manager !scope=row |Football supervisor !scope=row rowspan="3" |Assistant coach !scope=row rowspan="2" |Goalkeeping coach !scope=row rowspan="4" |Fitness coach !scope=row |Performance analysis coordinator !scope=row rowspan="3" |Performance analyst !scope=row |Medical director !scope=row rowspan="3" |Doctor !scope=row rowspan="4" |Physiotherapist !scope=row |Physiologist !scope=row rowspan="2" |Nutritionist !scope=row rowspan="2" |Psychologist !scope=row rowspan="3" |Masseur !scope=row |Podiatrist !scope=row |Market coordinator !scope=row rowspan="3" |Market analyst !scope=row rowspan="2" |Press secretary !scope=row rowspan="2" |Logistics manager !scope=row |Security chief !scope=row |Security supervisor !scope=row rowspan="3"|Security guard !scope=row rowspan="3"|Kit manager !scope=row rowspan="2"|Field assistant !scope=row |Administrative assistant
 * 🇦🇷 Gabriel Milito
 * 🇧🇷 Victor Bagy
 * 🇧🇷 Pedro Moreira
 * 🇧🇷 Carlos Alberto Isidoro
 * 🇧🇷 Lucas Gonçalves
 * 🇧🇷 Éder Aleixo
 * 🇦🇷 Leandro Ávila
 * 🇦🇷 Leandro Ávila
 * 🇦🇷 Leandro Ávila
 * 🇧🇷 Danilo Minutti
 * 🇧🇷 Rafael César
 * 🇧🇷 Rafael César
 * 🇧🇷 Cristiano Nunes
 * 🇧🇷 Marcelo Luchesi
 * 🇧🇷 Ricardo Seguins
 * 🇦🇷 Sergio Di Bartolo
 * 🇧🇷 Ricardo Seguins
 * 🇦🇷 Sergio Di Bartolo
 * 🇦🇷 Sergio Di Bartolo
 * 🇧🇷 Gustavo Nicoline
 * 🇧🇷 Alexandre Cosme
 * 🇧🇷 Matheus Dupin
 * 🇦🇷 Juan Manuel Cortes
 * 🇦🇷 Juan Manuel Cortes
 * 🇦🇷 Juan Manuel Cortes
 * 🇧🇷 Rodrigo Lasmar
 * 🇧🇷 Otaviano Oliveira
 * 🇧🇷 Rodrigo Barreiros
 * 🇧🇷 Haroldo Christo Aleixo
 * 🇧🇷 Haroldo Christo Aleixo
 * 🇧🇷 Haroldo Christo Aleixo
 * 🇧🇷 Guilherme Fialho
 * 🇧🇷 Bruno Leite
 * 🇧🇷 Vinícius Castro
 * 🇧🇷 Renato de Paula
 * 🇧🇷 Vinícius Castro
 * 🇧🇷 Renato de Paula
 * 🇧🇷 Renato de Paula
 * 🇧🇷 Roberto Chiari
 * 🇧🇷 Evandro Vasconcelos
 * 🇧🇷 Bárbara Maciel
 * 🇧🇷 Bárbara Maciel
 * 🇧🇷 Michelle Rios
 * 🇦🇷 Patricio Morales
 * 🇦🇷 Patricio Morales
 * 🇧🇷 Alexandre William
 * 🇧🇷 Aluízio Carlos
 * 🇧🇷 Fabrício Carvalho
 * 🇧🇷 Fabrício Carvalho
 * 🇧🇷 Fabrício Carvalho
 * 🇧🇷 Fabíola Efigênia
 * 🇧🇷 Rodrigo Weber
 * 🇧🇷 Fernando Ziskind
 * 🇧🇷 Pedro Picchioni
 * 🇧🇷 Edgard
 * 🇧🇷 Edgard
 * 🇧🇷 Edgard
 * 🇧🇷 Cássio Arreguy
 * 🇧🇷 Fabrício Almeida
 * 🇧🇷 Fabrício Almeida
 * 🇧🇷 Guilherme Ribeiro
 * 🇧🇷 Henrique Daimond
 * 🇧🇷 Henrique Daimond
 * 🇧🇷 Olimpo Garcia
 * 🇧🇷 Luiz Andrey Duarte
 * 🇧🇷 Antônio Carlos
 * 🇧🇷 Rafael Valente
 * 🇧🇷 Willian Lobo
 * 🇧🇷 Willian Lobo
 * 🇧🇷 Willian Lobo
 * 🇧🇷 Gilvan Felipe
 * 🇧🇷 Júlio Pacheco
 * 🇧🇷 Luciano Caxeado
 * 🇧🇷 Luciano Caxeado
 * 🇧🇷 Luciano Caxeado
 * 🇧🇷 Rubens Pinheiro
 * 🇧🇷 Ronald Rogério
 * 🇧🇷 Ronald Rogério
 * 🇧🇷 Matheus Salomão

Club board
The club's board took office on January 2, 2024, with its term ending on December 31, 2026.

Futsal
Atlético Mineiro opened its futsal department in the 1960s, achieving victories at state level in the following decades, and winning the Taça Brasil in 1985. In the late 1990s, the team, named Atlético Pax de Minas for sponsorship reasons, was prominent at national and international level. With players such as Manoel Tobias, Falcão and Lenísio in the squad, Atlético won the Brazilian Liga Futsal twice, in 1997 and 1999, and the Intercontinental Futsal Cup in 1998, finishing as runner-up of both competitions in 2000. In the second leg of the 1999 Liga Futsal finals against Rio de Janeiro, the attendance at Mineirinho was 25,713, a world record in the sport. In 2000, the sponsorship deal with Pax de Minas ended and Atlético's professional senior futsal team folded in the following year, with the youth sectors remaining. The club's futsal department ceased operations in 2009.

American football
In March 2018, the club announced the creation of an American football team, a three-year partnership with Grupo Sada and BH Eagles, named Galo Futebol Americano. In its first season playing with this name in the Superliga Nacional de Futebol Americano, Brazil's American football league, the team won the Southeast Conference undefeated, and proceeded to win all matches in the playoffs, including the Brasil Bowl against João Pessoa Espectros.

Olympic sports
Atlético Mineiro had departments for other Olympic sports throughout its history, with the athletics and volleyball ones achieving notability. In 1983, runner João da Mata won the São Silvestre road race as an Atlético athlete. In 2007, Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot and Alice Timbilil won the male and female categories of the same race, and celebrated their victory with Atlético flags. The club's board stated that the athletes had been sponsored as a marketing strategy. Atlético's men's volleyball department won the Minas Gerais Volleyball Championship a total of twelve times, ranking second in the state for most titles. The team had an especially successful period in the early 1980s, under the administrative management of Alexandre Kalil, who became club president in 2009.

title: Clube Atlético Mineiro


text:
Kevin Rowland

Kevin Rowland (born 17 August 1953) is a British singer and musician best known as the frontman for the pop band Dexys Midnight Runners (currently called Dexys). The band had several hits in the early 1980s, the most notable being "Geno" and "Come On Eileen", both of which reached number one on the UK Singles Chart.

Early life
Rowland was born in Wednesfield, Staffordshire (now Wolverhampton), on 17 August 1953 to Irish parents from Crossmolina, County Mayo, Ireland, and he lived for three years in Ireland from the age of one year old before returning to Wolverhampton. The family moved to Harrow when he was 11 and he left school aged 15.

Before his music career, Rowland worked as a hairdresser.

Career
Rowland's first group, Lucy & the Lovers, were influenced by Roxy Music and turned out to be short-lived. His next project, the punk rock act the Killjoys, were slightly more successful, releasing the single "Johnny Won't Get To Heaven" in 1977.

Alienated by the punk scene, Rowland, together with Killjoys guitarist Kevin Archer, formed a new soul-influenced group, Dexys Midnight Runners. Many of the group's songs were inspired by Rowland's Irish ancestry and were recognisable through Rowland's idiosyncratic vocal style. On forming the band Rowland thought it was "important to have a vocal style", he later recalled, "and I had the idea of putting that 'crying' voice on", partly inspired by General Johnson of Chairmen of the Board. The band had several hit singles, such as "Come On Eileen" (1982).

At the end of the 1980s, Rowland wanted to explore different songwriting, and Dexys Midnight Runners began recording more "introspective, mournful" music. The new material was unsuccessful; Dexys Midnight Runners were dropped by their label and disbanded. Rowland said: "I’d been too confident, too arrogant. I thought everyone would hear our new music and go: 'Wow.'" He became reliant on drugs, lost his money, and entered rehab.

When Dexys disbanded in 1987, Rowland recorded a solo album, The Wanderer, which, together with its three singles, was a commercial failure. His next release was not until 1999 when he recorded a collection of interpretations of classic songs called My Beauty, the album cover of which depicted a heavily made-up Rowland in a dress and lingerie.

In 2003, Rowland reformed Dexys Midnight Runners—featuring only one other original member, bassist Pete Williams, who fulfilled the role as Rowland's co-vocalist—and embarked on a successful comeback tour backed up with a greatest hits compilation album including two newly recorded songs, "Manhood" and "My Life in England". Both of these new songs were radio tested by the record label, but neither received enough airplay to be considered for release.

In 2012 Rowland re-launched Dexys Midnight Runners as "Dexys" with a new album One Day I'm Going to Soar accompanied by a UK tour. Rowland has always identified strongly with his Irish background and in 2016 Dexys released their fifth album, Let the Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul, featuring interpretations of Irish folk songs such as "Women of Ireland" and "Carrickfergus", among others.

Since around 2005, Rowland has hosted a popular DJ tour in clubs and venues throughout the UK. His eclectic set includes his personal favourites, vintage soul and pop numbers from such notables as T-Rex, Roxy Music, and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.

In summer of 2020 Rowland released a new video for the song Rag Doll, a promo which features his grandson Roo. In September 2020, My Beauty was re-released by Cherry Red Records and finally became a UK chart hit in October, peaking at number 73 in the albums chart.

title: Kevin Rowland


text:
Richard Ford

Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.

Ford's first collection of short stories, Rock Springs, was published in 1987.

In the United States, Ford received the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Independence Day. In Spain, he won the Princess of Asturias Award for 2016. In 2018, Ford received the Park Kyong-ni Prize, an international literary award from South Korea.

His novel Wildlife was adapted into a 2018 film of the same name, and in 2023 Ford published Be Mine, his fifth work of fiction chronicling the life of Frank Bascombe.

Early life
Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi, the only son of Parker Carrol and Edna Ford. Parker was a traveling salesman for Faultless Starch, a Kansas City company. Of his mother, Ford said, "Her ambition was to be, first, in love with my father and, second, to be a full-time mother." When Ford was eight years old, his father had a severe heart failure, and thereafter Ford spent as much time with his grandfather, a former prizefighter and hotel owner in Little Rock, Arkansas, as he did with his parents in Mississippi. Ford's father died of a second heart attack in 1960. In Jackson, Ford lived across the street from the home of author Eudora Welty.

Ford's grandfather had worked for a railroad. At the age of 19, before deciding to attend college, Ford began work on the Missouri Pacific train line as a locomotive engineer's assistant, learning the work while doing the job.

Ford received a B.A. degree from Michigan State University. Having enrolled to study hotel management, he switched to English. After graduating, he taught junior high school in Flint, Michigan, and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps but was discharged after contracting hepatitis. At university he met Kristina Hensley, his future wife and they married in 1968.

Despite mild dyslexia, Ford developed a serious interest in literature. He has stated in interviews that his dyslexia may have helped him as a reader since it forced him to read books slowly and thoughtfully.

Ford briefly attended law school but quit and participated with the creative writing program at the University of California, Irvine, to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree, which he received in 1970. Ford chose this course simply because "they admitted me. I remember getting the application for Iowa and thinking they'd never have let me in. I'm sure I was right about that too. But typical of me, I didn't know who was teaching at Irvine. I didn't know it was important to know such things. I wasn't the most curious of young men, even though I give myself credit for not letting that deter me." Actually, Oakley Hall and E. L. Doctorow were teaching there and Ford has acknowledged they influenced him. In 1971, he was selected for a three-year appointment in the University of Michigan Society of Fellows.

Early career
Ford published his first novel, A Piece of My Heart, the story of two unlikely drifters whose paths cross on an island in the Mississippi River, during 1976, and followed it with The Ultimate Good Luck during 1981. During the interim he briefly taught at Williams College and Princeton University. Despite good notices, the books sold little, and Ford retired from fiction writing to become a writer for the New York magazine Inside Sports. "I realized," Ford said, "there was probably a wide gulf between what I could do and what would succeed with readers. I felt that I'd had a chance to write two novels, and neither of them had really created much stir, so maybe I should find real employment, and earn my keep."

During 1982, the magazine was terminated, and when Sports Illustrated did not hire Ford, he resumed writing fiction, composing The Sportswriter, about a failed novelist turned sportswriter who undergoes an emotional crisis after the death of his son. It was named one of Time magazine's five best books of 1986 and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Ford followed up that success with Rock Springs (1987), a story collection —set mostly in Montana —that includes what remain some of his most anthologized short stories.

Mid-career and acclaim
Ford's 1990 novel Wildlife, a story of a Montana golf professional turned firefighter, met with mixed reviews and middling sales, but by the end of the 1990s Ford was increasingly sought after as an editor and contributor to various projects. Ford edited the 1990 The Best American Short Stories, the 1992 Granta Book of the American Short Story, the Fall 1996 "fiction issue" of Ploughshares, and the 1998 Granta Book of the American Long Story. In the latter volume's "Introduction," Ford stipulated that he preferred the designation "long story" instead of the term "novella." For the publishing project Library of America, Ford edited a two-volume edition of the selected works of the Mississippi writer Eudora Welty, which was published during 1998.

During 1995, Ford published the novel Independence Day, a sequel to The Sportswriter, featuring the continued story of its protagonist, Frank Bascombe. Reviews were positive, and the novel became the first to win both the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. During the same year, Ford was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story, for outstanding achievement for that genre. He ended the 1990s with a well-received collection of short stories, Women With Men, published during 1997. The Paris Review termed him a "master" of the short story genre.

Later life and writings
Ford lived for many years in New Orleans in the French Quarter, on lower Bourbon Street then in the Garden District of the same city, where his wife, Kristina, was the executive director of the city planning commission. For a while Ford and his wife resided in East Boothbay, Maine. As of 2023, Ford lives in Billings, Montana where he bought a house. During the intervening years, Ford lived in other locations, usually in the United States, as he pursued a peripatetic teaching career.

He obtained a teaching appointment at Bowdoin College during 2005 but kept the job for only one semester. During 2008 Ford was an adjunct professor of the Oscar Wilde Centre with the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, teaching in the Masters programme in creative writing. Starting December 29, 2010, Ford assumed the job of senior fiction professor at the University of Mississippi during the autumn of 2011, replacing Barry Hannah, who died during March 2010. During the autumn of 2012, he became the Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Roman Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Writing at the Columbia University School of the Arts.

As the new century commenced, he published another story collection, A Multitude of Sins (2002), followed by the novels The Lay Of The Land, —the third in his Bascombe series— in 2006 and Canada, published during May 2012. According to Ford, The Lay Of The Land completed his series of Bascombe novels but Canada was a stand-alone novel.

In April 2013, Ford read from a new Frank Bascombe story without revealing to the audience whether it was part of a longer work. By 2014, it was confirmed that the story was to appear in the book Let Me Be Frank With You, published during November of that year. The latter work consists of four interconnected novellas (or "long stories"), all narrated by Frank Bascombe. Let Me Be Frank With You was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. It did not win the prize but the selection committee praised the book for its "unflinching series of narratives, set in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, insightfully portraying a society in decline."

As in the preceding decade, Ford continued to assist with various editing projects. During 2007, he edited the New Granta Book of the American Short Story and in 2011 he edited Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work. During May 2017, Ford published a memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents.

In 2018, Wildlife was adapted into a film of the same name by director Paul Dano and screenwriter Zoe Kazan. It was released to widespread critical acclaim.

In 2020, Ford's short story collection, Sorry For Your Trouble, was published. His novel, Be Mine, was published in June 2023 and is the fifth —and presumably final— book in Ford's so-called "Bascombe series."

Reception
Ford began publishing his short stories in the 1980s, which corresponded with an American renaissance in the short story that centered around Raymond Carver (1938–1988). So there was a tendency early on to associate Ford's stories in Rock Springs with minimalism and its offshoot, an aesthetic style known as Dirty realism that referred to Carver's lower-middle-class subjects or the protagonists Ford portrays in Rock Springs. "Dirty realism" and "minimalism" came to be associated with a long list of writers during the 1970s and 1980s, including Tobias Wolff, Ann Beattie, Frederick Barthelme, Larry Brown, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Gordon Lish.

However, many of the characters in the novels about Frank Bascombe (The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land, Let Me Be Frank With You, Be Mine), including the protagonist, enjoy degrees of material affluence and cultural capital not normally associated with dirty realism.

Ford's writing demonstrates "a meticulous concern for the nuances of language ... [and] the rhythms of phrases and sentences". He has described his sense of language as "a source of pleasure in itself—- all of its corporeal qualities, its syncopations, moods, sounds, the way things look on the page". Besides this "devotion to language" is what he terms "the fabric of affection that holds people close enough together to survive".

Comparisons have been drawn between Ford's work and the writings of John Updike, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy. Ford resists such comparisons, commenting, "You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself."

Ford's works of fiction "dramatize the breakdown of such cultural institutions as marriage, family, and community," and his "marginalized protagonists often typify the rootlessness and nameless longing ... pervasive in a highly mobile, present-oriented society in which individuals, having lost a sense of the past, relentlessly pursue their own elusive identities in the here and now." Ford "looks to art, rather than religion, to provide consolation and redemption in a chaotic time."

Controversies
Ford once sent Alice Hoffman a copy of one of her books with bullet holes in it after she angered him by unfavorably reviewing The Sportswriter.

In 2004, Ford spat on Colson Whitehead when encountering him at a party two years after Whitehead published a negative review of A Multitude of Sins in The New York Times. Thirteen years later, Ford remained unrepentant. Writing in Esquire in 2017, Ford declared that "as of today, I don't feel any different about Mr. Whitehead, or his review, or my response."

Awards and honors

 * 1987 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Fiction for The Sportswriter; again in 2007 for The Lay of the Land; and in 2013 for Canada
 * 1995 Rea Award for the Short Story, for outstanding achievement in that genre
 * 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award, for Independence Day
 * 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for Independence Day
 * 2001 PEN/Malamud Award, for excellence in short fiction
 * 2005 St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates
 * 2008 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
 * 2013 Prix Femina étranger, for Canada
 * 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, for Canada
 * 2015 Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature part of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival
 * 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, finalist, for Let Me Be Frank with You
 * 2016 Princess of Asturias Award in Literature
 * 2018 Park Kyong-ni Prize
 * 2018 Siegfried Lenz Prize
 * 2019 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction

Novels

 * A Piece of My Heart (1976)
 * The Ultimate Good Luck (1981)
 * The Sportswriter (1986)
 * Wildlife (1990)
 * Independence Day (1995)
 * The Lay of the Land (2006)
 * Canada (2012)
 * Let Me Be Frank With You (2014)
 * Be Mine (2023)

Story collections

 * Rock Springs (1987)
 * Women with Men: Three Stories (1997)
 * A Multitude of Sins (2002)
 * Vintage Ford (2004)
 * Sorry for Your Trouble (2020)

Memoir

 * Between Them: Remembering My Parents (2017)

Screenplays

 * Bright Angel (1990)

As contributor or editor

 * The Granta Book of the American Short Story (1992)
 * The Granta Book of the American Long Story (1999)
 * The Essential Tales of Chekhov (1999)
 * Foreword to Alec Soth, NIAGARA (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2006)
 * The New Granta Book of the American Short Story (2007)
 * Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work (2012)
 * Foreword to Maude Schuyler Clay, Mississippi History (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2015)

Work

 * "Nobody's Everyman", Bookforum (Apr/May 2009)
 * Leaving for Kenosha, The New Yorker (2008)
 * How Was it to be Dead?, The New Yorker (2006)

Profiles

 * Bibliography, University of Mississippi
 * Profile, Ploughshares
 * Overview of Ford's recent career, and critique of short stories in The Walrus magazine
 * Overview of Ford's recent career, and critique of short stories in The Walrus magazine

Interviews

 * Interview on the 7th Avenue Project radio show Richard Ford discusses his Frank Bascombe novels, his approach to fiction and his life.
 * – Transcript of interview with Ramona Koval, The Book Show, ABC Radio National 31 December 2007
 * Interview for public radio in Maine (2006), Maine Humanities Council
 * Interview (1996), Salon.com
 * Interview on Writer's Voice (2006) with radio host, Francesca Rheannon
 * Interview (2002), IdentityTheory.com
 * Interview (2006), The New Yorker
 * Interview (2006), Nerve.com
 * Interview, book reading, and discussion video streams and MP3 download (2006), University of Pennsylvania
 * Interview February 2007; Pulitzer Prize-winning author talks with Robert Birnbaum about his latest Frank Bascombe novel, The Lay of the Land
 * Richard Ford: Shooting for the stars. Video interview by Louisiana Channel 2012.
 * Interview (2016), The Ringer (website)
 * Interview (2016), The Ringer (website)

Archival collections

 * Guide to The Ultimate Good Luck Galley Proofs. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
 * Richard Ford Collection owned by the University of Mississippi Department of Archives and Special Collections.

title: Richard Ford


text:
Battle of Suomussalmi

The Battle of Suomussalmi was fought between Finnish and Soviet forces in the Winter War. The action took place from 30 November 1939 to 8 January 1940. The outcome was a Finnish victory against superior forces. This battle is considered the clearest, most important, and most significant Finnish victory in the northern half of Finland. In Finland, the battle is still seen today as a symbol of the entirety of the Winter War itself.

Course of battle
On 30 November 1939 the Soviet 163rd Rifle Division crossed the border between Finland and the Soviet Union and advanced from the north-east towards the village of Suomussalmi. The Soviet objective was to advance to the city of Oulu, effectively cutting Finland in half. This sector had only one Finnish battalion (Er.P 15), which was placed near Raate, outside Suomussalmi.

Suomussalmi was taken with little resistance on 7 December (only two incomplete companies of covering forces led a holding action between the border and Suomussalmi), but the Finns destroyed the village before this, to deny the Soviets shelter, and withdrew to the opposite shore of lakes Niskanselkä and Haukiperä.

The first extensive fight started on 8 December, when Soviet forces began to attack across the frozen lakes to the west. Their attempt failed completely. The second part of Soviet forces led the attack to the northwest on Puolanka, that was defended by the Er.P 16 (lit. 16th detached battalion), that had just arrived. This attempt also failed.

On 9 December the defenders were reinforced with a newly founded regiment (JR 27). Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo was given the command of the Finnish forces and he began immediate counter-measures to regain Suomussalmi. The main forces advanced on Suomussalmi, but failed to take the village, suffering serious losses. On 24 December Soviet units counterattacked, but failed to break through the surrounding Finnish forces.

Reinforced with two new regiments (JR 64 and JR 65), the Finns again attacked on 27 December. This time, they took the village, and the Soviets retreated. A large part of them managed to reach the Russian border along the Kiantajärvi lake. During this time, the Soviet 44th Rifle Division had advanced from the east towards Suomussalmi. It was entrenched on the road between Suomussalmi and Raate and got caught up in the retreat of the other Soviet forces.

Between 4 and 8 January 1940 the 44th Rifle Division was divided into isolated groups and destroyed by the Finnish troops (in a tactic known as motti), leaving much heavy equipment for the Finnish troops.

Outcome
The battle resulted in a major victory for the Finns. If the Soviet Union had captured the city of Oulu, the Finns would have had to defend the country on two fronts and an important rail link to Sweden would have been severed. The battle also gave a decisive boost to the morale of the Finnish army.

In addition, Finnish forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road captured a large amount of military supplies, including tanks (43), field guns (70), trucks (278), horses (1,170), anti-tank guns (29), machine guns (300), rifles (6000) and other weapons, which were greatly needed by the Finnish army.

Alvar Aalto sculpted a memorial for the Finnish soldiers who died.

Analysis
The Battle of Suomussalmi is often cited as an example of how a small force, properly led and fighting in familiar terrain, can defeat a vastly numerically superior enemy. Factors which contributed to the Finnish victory included:

 * Finnish troops possessed higher mobility due to skis and sleds; by contrast, Soviet heavy equipment confined them to roads.
 * The Soviet objective to cut Finland in half across the Oulu region, while appearing reasonable on a map, was inherently unrealistic, as the region was mostly forested marshland, with its road network consisting mainly of logging trails. Mechanized divisions had to rely on them and so became easy targets for the mobile Finnish ski troops.
 * Finnish strategy was flexible and often unorthodox, for example, Finnish troops targeted Soviet field kitchens, which demoralised Soviet soldiers fighting in a sub-Arctic winter.
 * The Soviet army was poorly equipped, especially with regard to winter camouflage clothing; by contrast, Finnish troops' equipment were well-suited for warfare in deep snow and freezing temperatures.
 * The Finnish army had very high morale, resulting from the fact that it was defending their nation. Soviet troops, however, had exclusively-political reasons for their attack, consequently losing their will to fight soon despite continual efforts by Soviet propagandists.
 * An additional factor remained Soviet counter-intelligence failures: Finnish troops often intercepted the Soviet communications, which relied heavily on standard phone lines.
 * The Finnish tactics involved simplicity where needed, as the final assault was a simple head-on charge, which decreased the chances of tactical errors. Rough weather also favoured comparatively-simple plans.

title: Battle of Suomussalmi