The stars of European football all want to win the iconic EURO trophy for their national team.
Italy or England will earn immortality in football when one of the finalists wins the UEFA EURO 2020 title at London’s Wembley Stadium on Sunday – and the players and their celebrating fans will fully understand the scale of this achievement right now as their proud skipper triumphs Henri Delaunay Cup.
The coveted trophy symbolizing the European national football team’s premier competition bears the name of the French football administrator who played a key role in UEFA’s birth in June 1954 and served as UEFA’s first Secretary – General until his untimely death in November 1955.
Henri Delaunay’s dream
This is especially true because Henri Delaunay was the main catalyst in the process that led to the launch in the 1950s of the European Nations Cup – the competition that would eventually become UEFA’s European Football Championship and flourish into one of the world’s biggest sports goggles.
Delaunay had encouraged the dream of setting up a European competition for national teams since the 1920s and persistently followed his dream when UEFA took its first shaky steps. Unfortunately, he would not live to see that dream come true – but his groundbreaking basics would never be forgotten. When the new competition was finally launched at the UEFA Congress in Stockholm in June 1958, Ebbe Schwartz – UEFA’s first president – suggested that in recognition of Henri Delaunay’s creative influence, the trophy awarded to the winners should bear his name.
At the same time, the president of the French Football Federation (FFF), Pierre Pochonet, announced that his association would offer the trophy. The subsequent task of getting the new silverware made fell on Henri Delaunay’s son Pierre, who succeeded his late father as UEFA’s secretary general in 1956 and retained the impetus that led to the important decision in Stockholm.
Trophy
“Europe is a word of Greek origin,” Pierre Delaunay told UEFA Direct in September 2005. “Europe really has its origins in the Mediterranean and Greece invented the Olympics, so I thought it would be a good idea to find one. ancient Greek artifact, depicts a ball if possible – something that was not very common – and reproduces this in the form of a trophy.
“A Greek journalist who was a friend of Constantin Constantaras, a member of [UEFA] The executive committee, found a sculpture of an athlete checking a ball at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The Parisian silversmith Chobillon, who was commissioned to make the trophy, reproduced it on the cup, on the opposite side of the title. “
The original trophy was later purchased by the Arthus-Bertrand company in Paris. It was exhibited for the first time at the first four-team Nations Cup final in France in 1960 and was to be lifted by winning captains a total of 12 times.
A new version
Cristiano Ronaldo with Henri Delaunay Cup 2016 / Laurence Griffiths / Getty Images
The sculpture in question did not survive the reworking of the trophy by the famous London-based jeweler, silversmith and jeweler Asprey ahead of UEFA EURO 2008 in Austria and Switzerland. In the intervening years, the Nations Cup had been renamed the UEFA European Football Championship for the 1966-68 edition, and the number of participants increased in relation to the competition’s growth in size and appeal – first from four to eight in 1980, and then to 16 for the 1996 tournament in England.
When the championship took its elevated place along with the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics on the podium for global sports attractions, UEFA decided that an updated version of the trophy was required to reflect the prestige and appeal of what was now commonly known as “EURO”.
UEFA wanted to improve the quality and scale of the trophy to have a contact point for EURO – the feeling was that the original trophy was too small and overshadowed by other UEFA competition trophies. Asprey was perfect for the job of reincarnating the trophy. But there was never any debate about the name of the new cutlery – Henri Delaunay’s eternal legacy would remain intact.
The second version of the trophy is still based on the original version. It is made of sterling silver and is 60 cm long, 18 cm higher than the original and weighs 8 kg, which is 2 kg heavier than the first trophy.
There are other minor differences between the original and the updated versions – the silver base was enlarged to make it stable. In addition, the names of the winning countries that had appeared on the pedestal have been engraved on the back of the trophy.
Sought after by the stars
Spain plays stars with Henri Delaunay Cup / Laurence Griffiths / Getty Images
The new trophy was presented at the 2008 European Championship qualifiers in Montreux, Switzerland, on January 26, 2006. When the final tournament took place two years later, Spain goalkeeper Iker Casilla was privileged to be the first skipper to lift the updated version after his team’s victory over Germany in Vienna .
Europe’s finest players feel an intense pride in representing their country – and swinging the Henri Delaunay Cup is still a goal they long to achieve when they put on their national jersey.
The football world is not only looking forward with eager excitement to see Sunday’s final develop. In particular, fans of Italy and England try to imagine how they will feel and react when their victorious captain receives the Henri Delaunay Cup from UEFA President Alexander Čeferin, raises this iconic prize to the sky and concludes another important chapter in the realm of football and existing history.
