Commemorating tragic heroes: statuary of soccer players who died mid-career

Abstract

Statues of soccer players are a phenomenon as global as the sport itself, with 450 in situ at stadiums or civic sites around the world. A small subset of these statues have been motivated by the collective grief felt at an athletes’ life and career being cut short in its prime, a scenario as yet unexplored in the growing literature on sports sculpture and monuments. Using the authors’ unique database of the global soccer statuary to provide contextual comparisons, this paper focuses on two such statues, of Partizan Belgrade striker Dragan Mance and Sevilla FC defender Antonio Puerta. Together they illustrate how what are primarily sites of mourning and commemoration of a life lost can also reflect specific intersections between soccer, fanaticism and religion across different national and supporter cultures, engagements and tensions.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Constantino Gañán, Dušan Mihajilovic, James Moor and Dejan Zec for their invaluable help in researching this article.

Notes

1. Armstrong, ‘Memorializing in Sport’; Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France, 186.

2. Mol, Identity and the Sacred, 206.

3. Figurative statues portray a lifelike representation of a human subject. They are at least close to life-size and depict the body; as opposed to statuettes or figurines, which are small enough to be easily lifted, or busts, which depict just head and shoulders. Within this article the terms soccer statues or statuary are used to define existing or planned statues of specific soccer players, managers, chairmen, owners or founders, erected in tribute to their contribution within the sport, and accessible to the general public.

4. Between January 2013 and March 2014, the authors constructed a database of existing statues of soccer players, managers, and chairmen as part of a wider project into commemoration in sport, which they have continued to maintain and update. Data and images were obtained through a literature, archival and online search, and via interviews with sculptors and project organisers. Variables collected included the precise location, date of unveiling, design type (broadly classified as ‘action’, ‘posed’ or ‘triumph’), the full plaque or plinth inscription, and the identity of the statue project promoters and funders, as well as further demographic and performance information on the subjects depicted. As of 1 April 2017 the authors had identified 286 in situ statues or statue groups of specific soccer players, depicting 356 distinct players. In addition 45 statues depicting managers, 18 statues depicting chairmen/founders/executives and 177 statues depicting anonymous players or fans have been identified. Note that some statues feature more than one subject, and some subjects have been honoured on multiple occasions. The database is complete and accurate to the best of our knowledge. Since April 2014 the primary elements of the database (the statue location, sculptor, unveiling date, inscription and photos of the statue showing the design) have been publically available through the project website at http://www.sportingstatues.com.

5. Savage, ‘The Politics of Memory’; Prown, ‘Mind in Matter’, 135; Dwyer, ‘Symbolic Accretion and Commemoration’.

6. Huyssen, Twilight Memories.

7. Pre-eminent examples of research on sports statues include Smith, ‘Frozen Fists’ and Osmond, Phillips and O’Neill, ‘Putting up Your Dukes’. For a soccer-specific review, see Stride, Wilson, and Thomas, ‘From Pitch to Plinth’.

8. Morris, Sinners, Lovers, and Heroes, 40.

9. Stride, Thomas, and Wilson, ‘The Sporting Statues Project’, http://www.sportingstatues.com.

10. E. Runia, ‘Burying the Dead, Creating the Past’, 313.

11. Doss, Memorial Mania, 50.

12. Ibid., 51.

13. Stevens and Franck, Memorials as Spaces of Engagement.

14. Taylor, ‘Football History and Memory’, 36.

15. In the UK, based upon information gathered from statue project organisers and sculptors regarding statues erected between 2001 and 2010, the median cost of a single full body soccer player bronze statue of at least three-quarter size was approximately £65,000 UK pounds. See Stride, Wilson, and Thomas, ‘From Pitch to Plinth’, 6.

16. Pascal, Sprott, and Muehling, ‘The Influence of Evoked Nostalgia’; Seifried and Meyer, ‘Nostalgia-Related Aspects’; Stride, Wilson, and Thomas, ‘Honouring Heroes by Branding in Bronze’; Ramshaw and Gammon, ‘More than Just Nostalgia?’; Funk and James, ‘Consumer Loyalty’; and Lasaleta, Sedikides, and Vohs, ‘Nostalgia Weakens the Desire for Money’.

17. Bale, Sport, Space and the City; Stride, Wilson, and Thomas, ‘Honouring Heroes by Branding in Bronze’; and Ramshaw and Gammon, ‘More than just Nostalgia?’.

18. Dixon, Consuming Football in Late Modern Life, 59; and Bale, Sport, Space and the City. 79.

19. Walsh and Giulianotti, ‘This Sporting Mammon’.

20. Giulianotti, ‘Supporters, Followers, Fans and Flaneurs’, 33.

21. Stride, Thomas, and Wilson, ‘The Sporting Statues Project’, http://www.sportingstatues.com.

22. For example, in the UK, statues of sportsmen or sportswomen from team sports are most likely to be found at a stadium or sports facility (54%) with a smaller percentage at civic sites. Conversely athletes from individual sports are more likely to be found at civic sites (64%). See http://www.sportingstatues.com for precise locations.

23. Prominent examples are the United States’ Wilma Rudolph (in Clarksville, Tennessee), Australia’s Betty Cuthbert (Melbourne), or the Netherlands’ Fanny Blankers-Koen in Rotterdam. Rudolph’s statue is covered in detail in: Smith, ‘Mapping America’s Sporting Landscape: A Case Study of Three Statues’; Cuthbert’s statue is sited at the MCG and was unveiled in (2003); Blankers-Coen is depicted in two statues, one sited in Rotterdam (unveiled 2005), the other in her home town of Hengelo (unveiled 2007).

24. An anonymous female soccer player is depicted in Christel Lechner’s Alltagsmenschen (trans. Everyday People) statue in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Female fans appear in fan statues in Kaiserslautern, (Germany), at RCD Espanyol (Spain), and at Sunderland FC (UK).

25. Schuman and Scott, ‘Generations and Collective Memories’.

26. Stride et al., ‘Modeling Stadium Statue’.

27. For example, in Spain and Portugal there are 17 statues of specific soccer players as of 1 April 2017. In 59% of cases the subject was alive when the statue was unveiled. The equivalent percentages for Argentina and Brazil (47 statues, 74%) and East Asia (China, Japan, Indonesia; 9 statues or statue groups, 55%) are similar. Likewise in US baseball: of the 256 statues depicting specific players, 131 (51%) were unveiled when the player was still alive.

28. Only 3 of the 34 soccer player statues sited in Eastern Europe were erected when the subject was alive.

29. If the statue group depicting the entire Chinese squad that successfully qualified for the 2002 FIFA World Cup is counted as a single instance, just 22 examples of active-player depiction exist. These include such luminaries as Pele (twice), Johann Cruyff, Thierry Henry, Lionel Messi, Edwin Van Der Sar, Gabriel Batistuta, Andres Iniesta, David Silva, Samuel Eto'o and Juan Roman Riquelme. The statues of Batistuta and Riquelme were unveiled near or at their ‘home’ stadiums whilst they still represented the club that played there. For further details on each statue see the Sporting Statues Project database at http://www.sportingstatues.com.

30. Russell, ‘“We All Agree, Name the Stand after Shankly”’, 2.

31. Corkill and Moore, ‘“The Island of Blood”’, 249.

32. Giulianotti, A Sociology of the Global Game, 21–2.

33. Huggins, ‘Death, Memorialisation and the Victorian Sporting Hero’; Corkill and Moore, ‘“The Island of Blood”’; Armstrong, ‘Memorializing in Sport’; and Foster and Woodthorpe, ‘A Golden Silence?’.

34. M. McGuinness, ‘The Canonisation of Common People’; Woolridge, ‘“They Shall Not Grow Old”’; Russell, ‘“We All Agree, Name the Stand after Shankly”’; and Herzog, Memorialkultur Im Fußballsport.

35. Wangen, Die Gräber Der Götter; Cardorff and Böttger, Der Letzte Pass; and Sharpe, The Final Whistle.

36. Goldblatt, The Game of Our Lives.

37. Fordyce, ‘Phillip Hughes’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/30236817 (accessed January 12, 2016).

38. Huggins and O’Mahony, The Visual in Sport.

39. Mitchell, ‘Monuments, Memorials, and the Politics of Memory’, 443.

40. McGuinness, ‘The Canonisation of Common People’, 212; R. Penn, ‘Cathedrals of Sport’; and A. Edge, Faith in Our Fathers.

41. M. Huggins, ‘Gone but Not Forgotten’, 481.

42. Ibid., 488.

43. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory.

44. reprezentacija.rs, ‘Mance, Dragan’, http://www.reprezentacija.rs/index.php/statistika/reprezentativci/1253 (accessed March 3, 2014).

45. Preljic, ‘Poginuo Mance’.

46. Unattributed, ‘Tuga Sa “Juga”’; tribuna.sports.ru, “Трибуна Блог”, http://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/serbian/229955.html (accessed March 5, 2014).

47. underPFC, ‘Tragična Smrt Dragana Mancea (Gusle)’ (2012). This contemporary pop song can be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PulJ-RccwjM (accessed March 5, 2014); mudrac3srpska, ‘Dragan Mance Pesma’ (2009). This traditional Serbian folk song can be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBVtn5VG0SI (accessed March 5, 2014); FK-Partizan-Belgrade, ‘2353 T Shirt Fc Partizan “Dragan Mance – the Legend Is Alive” – Grey’, http://www.partizanshop.rs/user/item.jsp?f_item_id=29937&f_cat_id=2413&f_shop_id=54&f_lang_id=2 (accessed March 5, 2014); Paunovic, ‘Mance’; Kovacevic, ‘Dragan Mance Dobio Ulicu’, http://novosti.rs/vesti/beograd.74.html:346660-Dragan-Mance-dobio-ulicu (accessed March 12, 2014).

48. Moor, Grobar: Partizan Pleasure. For images of banners commemorating and celebrating Dragan Mance see, for example: rts.rs, ‘Ulica Za Mancea U Zemunu’, http://www.rts.rs/page/sport/sr/story/36/Fudbal/766774/Ulica+za+Mancea+u+Zemunu.html (accessed March 3, 2014); Bunić, ‘Dragan Mance Uskoro Dobija Ulicu Kod Stadiona Partizana’, http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Beograd/238372/Dragan-Mance-uskoro-dobija-ulicu-kod-stadiona-Partizana (accessed March 3, 2014).

49. Haurie, ‘El Autor Del’, http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/08/28/obituarios/1188312804 (accessed March 3, 2014).

50. Fuertes, ‘Muere Antonio Puerta’, http://deportes.elpais.com/deportes/2007/08/28/actualidad/1188285718_850215.html (accessed March 3, 2014).

51. Press-Association, ‘Footballer Foe Dies During Game’, www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/26/football; Ashdown, ‘Benfica Striker Dies’, http://www.theguardian.com/football/2004/jan/26/newsstory.sport4 (accessed March 5, 2014).

52. Alvarado to jesusalvarado.com, http://www.jesusalvarado.com/2012/12/27/antonio-puerta-ya-tiene-su-calle/ (accessed March 12, 2014);.adelante-antifa to adelante-antifa, http://adelanteantifa.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/sevilla-fc-ud-almeria-trofeo-antonio.html (accessed March 3, 2014).

53. Más-fútbol, ‘El Sevilla Se Enfrentará Al Málaga’, http://futbol.as.com/futbol/2008/08/06/mas_futbol/1217973624_850215.html (accessed March 9, 2014).

54. marca.com, ‘Del Nido Anuncia Que’, http://archivo.marca.com/edicion/marca/futbol/1a_division/sevilla/es/desarrollo/1031086.html; J.I. Macias to Desde Gol Sur De Nervion, http://desdegolsurdenervion.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/puertas-del-estadio.html (accessed March 3, 2014); Departamento-Prensa-Sevilla-F.C., ‘El Trofeo Antonio Puerta Ya Está En El Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán’, http://sevillafc.es/nuevaweb/actualidad/noticias/11660 (accessed March 5, 2014).

55. Departamento-Prensa-Sevilla-F.C., ‘La Estatua De Puerta, La Estatua De Un Mito’, http://www.sevillafc.es/nuevaweb/comprometidos/historia/25205 (accessed March 12, 2014).

56. Goran Mance, correspondence with the first author via a translator, February 2014.

57. Stride, Thomas, and Wilson, ‘The Sporting Statues Project’.

58. Speed, ‘Dragan Mance (Dokumentari Film)’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcXGJZ4e87U (accessed March 26, 2014).

59. For example: Rojadirecta, ‘Propuestas Para Recordar a Antonio Puerta’, http://forum.rojadirecta.es/showthread.php?23156-Propuestas-para-recordar-a-Antonio-Puerta&s=fb2c4b26c9fc9f47067aaec97783091c (accessed March 3, 2014); A. Rodriguez to Mundo Sevillista2007, http://www.mundosevillista.com/blog/?p=420 (accessed March 5, 2014).

60. Constantino Gañán, telephone interview and correspondence with third author, February 2014; Departamento-Prensa-Sevilla-F.C., ‘El Concurso De La Escultura’, http://sevillafc.es/nuevaweb/actualidad/noticias/13076 (accessed March 3, 2014).

61. Constantino Gañán, telephone interview and correspondence with third author, February 2014.

62. Departamento-Prensa-Sevilla-F.C., ‘Acto Escultura a Antonio Puerta’; ‘La Estatua De Puerta’, http://www.sevillafc.es/nuevaweb/comprometidos/historia/25205 (accessed March 3, 2014); Quequeno-Sevilla, ‘Queueno: Antonio Puerta Ciudad Deportiva Monumento’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RQvbGx0M5A (accessed March 5, 2014).

63. Pogrebne-Usluge-Beograd, ‘Radivoje Korać’, http://www.beogradskagroblja.rs/page/famous-persons/100132/cnt/radivoje-kora%C4%87.en-GB.htm (accessed March 3, 2014); ‘Dragan Mance’, http://www.beogradskagroblja.rs/page/famous-persons/100162/cnt/dragan-mance.en-GB.htm (accessed March 3, 2014).

64. Other soccer players with half-life-size or larger grave statues that we have identified include three other Eastern European players who died suddenly during their careers, CSKA Moscow’s Sergei Perkhun, Croatian goalkeeper Ivan Turina, and Florin Piturca of FCM Turnu Severin, Romania – along with former Germany captain Fritz Walter and an English lower league player Jim Sanders. Three Ukrainian managers or coaches – Dynamo Kyiv‘s Valery Lobanovsky and Valyantsin Byalkevich, and Dnipro’s Evgeny Kucherevsky – have also been honoured in this way.

65. Constantino Gañán, telephone interview and correspondence with third author, February 2014.

66. For example, the statue of Brazilian striker Zico erected in his honour by his club side CR Flamengo, is sited at the club’s headquarters building. Flamengo, in common with many other Brazilian clubs, have traditionally hired large municipal stadia in which to play home matches rather than owning their own ground.

67. Photographs of each statue can be viewed at the Sporting Statues Project database, http://www.sportingstatues.com.

68. Goran Mance, correspondence with the first author via a translator, February 2014.

69. mudrac3srpska, ‘Dragan Mance Pesma’. The Dragan Mance Award trophy design is pictured here: izaberipartizan.com, http://casopis.izaberipartizan.com/v2/galerija.php?pcId=96&page=1# (accessed March 3, 2014). An example of a banner with the same image as the statue can be found here: Rosić and Miladinović, ‘Legenda Živi’, http://www.pressonline.rs/vesti/Presspedia/132127/legenda-zivi.html (accessed March 3, 2014). The mural on the Belgrade to Novi Sad highway is pictured here: partizanbeograd.net, http://www.partizanbeograd.net/2013/09/blog-post_3.html (accessed March 3, 2014).

70. Goran Mance, correspondence with the first author via a translator, February 2014. Though Mance always celebrated with the knee slide and raised arms depicted by the statue, the sculpture was based on a specific Mance celebration following having scored Partizan’s first goal in a 2–1 win vs. Red Star Belgrade in 1984. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDKbRasFGC4 (accessed March 3, 2014).

71. Constantino Gañán, telephone interview and correspondence with third author, February 2014.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid.

74. Russell, ‘“We All Agree, Name the Stand after Shankly”’.