São Paulo – Esporte Clube Sírio (pictured above), a sports club founded by Syrian and Lebanese immigrants in the capital city of São Paulo, Brazil, celebrates its 105th anniversary this Thursday (14). Currently, with 5,500 members, the club offers leisure, culture, and sports activities to its members and has initiatives to preserve Arab traditions, customs, and hospitality in Brazil.
“The Syrian Club is a landmark in the city of São Paulo; it is the great house representing the Arab colony,” said the president, Marcos Demetrio Haik, in a release. “Today, the club is a place where people come and go with the feeling we have managed to keep the Arab traditions added to sports, social and cultural aspects,” he added.
The club’s history began when a group of young immigrants celebrated the birthday of one of its members, Milhem Simão Racy, in a room in a pension on Rua Augusta and gave him the first presidency of the then-born ‘Sport Club Syrio’ as a gift. Shortly thereafter, the group rented an office in a building on Rua do Comércio, which served as the club’s headquarters until 1920.
According to information released by Esporte Clube Sírio, the main goal was to practice sports in the early years. Before reaching one year, there were already 150 members. At the beginning of 1920, the head office was transferred to a complex on Rua Florêncio de Abreu. At the same time, Parque São Jorge was rented as a sports venue. In the early 1920s, Sírio acquired an area in the Ponte Pequena region, where it transferred its social and sports headquarters.
With the growth of São Paulo, many families and other clubs moved to the city’s south side. Sírio then sold the Ponte Pequena headquarters in 1949 and, with the support of a group of partners, acquired several plots of land on Avenida Indianópolis to house the new Esporte Clube Sírio, where it is currently located, with enough space to meet the growing number of members.
Soon after came many other achievements, such as the triumphs of basketball teams, culminating with the conquest of the Interclub World Championship in 1979, the opening of the new headquarters building in 2000, the centenary celebration in 2017, with the release of a commemorative stamp and postmark by the Brazilian postal service (Correios), festivity and inauguration of the Centennial Landmark: A rock weighing more over eight tonnes from the region of Palmyra, Syria. Today the club reaches its 105th anniversary.
Translated by Elúsio Brasileiro
