40-year old inter-club parish trophy finds spot in Fifa museum

MUMBAI: Runners-up trophies are seldom celebrated with aplomb. More often than not, they serve as painful reminders of what could've been. So when Hanzel Fernandez, 56, won the runners-up trophy in 1980 for an inter-club parish football tournament (St Anne's Parish, Mazagaon), you imagine he was more disappointed than anything else.
Forty years after winning that trophy, though, Hanzel couldn't be more proud of it.After all, it has found a place at the Fifa World Football Museum in Zurich.
Fernandez's daughter Kimberly, a star footballer herself, is part of the Fifa Fan Movement. Kimberly, who has captained the Mumbai team in the senior nationals, was also the only representative from India who was selected to attend the Fifa Best Awards which was held in Milan last year.
When Fifa announced a contest to choose 'Eleven objects' from around the world to be placed in the museum, Kimberly immediately chose her dad's vintage trophy. In her video entry, she spoke about how great an influence her dad has been in her football career.
Hanzel Fernandez
Hanzel represented teams like ICL & Customs before he began coaching in 1991, starting with St Mary's SSC. He then went on to coach top footballing schools like Campion and Christ Church before joining DY Patil where he's been for the past 11 years.
The judges were impressed with Kimberly's video and shortlisted her entry. Luckily, she managed to courier the trophy just before the national lockdown began.
Though Hanzel doesn't remember the team they played in the final, he remembers that just reaching the final was an achievement in itself.
"Nowadays trophies are given easily and for everything. Earlier you had to really earn your trophies," he told TOI. "Any club tournament was always big, especially in our area where there were many top teams. So getting that runners-up trophy was amazing, even though we must've thought otherwise when we lost the final."