The First Fanatic Supporter in the World
A lot of people assume the first fanatic supporters were in England and rightfully so. As for that time there were massive crowds already attending matches and cheering for their team. However in England it was more of a pastime to escape daily life from the factories. Where we now see great banter and singing, over a 100 years ago it was more “ooh” and “aah” or an occasional applause here and there. The guy I am talking about was more than that.
I am talking about Prudencio Miguel Reyes Viola. The first ‘hincha’ as we know nowadays in the world.
On 28 April 1882 Prudencio Miguel Reyes Viola was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. From now on referred to as Gordo, as he was better known by this name. Little is known about Gordo except for that he was a professional saddler. It is not sure when he started working for Club Nacional de Futebol but multiple sources say it was around 1900 when he was 18 years old.
The word hincha is contributed to the Club Nacional de Futebol. One of his main tasks was to inflate the footballs for the club which in Uruguayan Spanish is the word ‘hinchar’. He was familiar with working with leather as he was a saddler for his main job. Back then leather was the main product for footballs and still is for saddles.
In that time he became a loyal follower of the Tricolores and started to watch every match, shouting several chants throughout the game like 'Nacional! Nacional!', 'Arriba Nacional!' and 'Vamos arriba Nacional!'. These are only a few of the many examples of Gordo supporting his club. Unfortunately I couldn’t find more than these few but without a doubt he had more chants than this.
Because of this other supporters started to notice him and people began to ask who Gordo was. People who had seen him before started to refer to him as ‘the hincha, the one of the Nacional's balls”.
Since the rising popularity of Gordo and football becoming bigger and bigger the word hincha traveled through South America and more and more clubs started to adopt his way of supporting.
Because of Gordo his influence on Nacional and even the world of supporting football he got his own statue inside the stadium of Nacional. He passed away on the 7th of February 1947. Let us all just take a moment and realise what he meant for the modern day hinchas all around the world.
Thanks to Gordo we are all hinchas, in our heart and in our soul. When we sing or shout for our club we are all representing the spirit of Gordo.
Vincent Duitsch - May 2023