A 123-year-old page of The Courier is to hang in the offices of the
Spanish Football Association after it was revealed that, thanks to an
article in the paper that day, Sevilla FC can officially claim to be
Spain’s oldest club.
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| Seville FC president José María del Nido and club historian Carlos Romero with the page from The Courier. |
The Courier revealed in September that the discovery of the club
being founded 15 years earlier than previously thought was due to the
story on page four of the paper from March 17 1890, which details how a
group of young British, mainly Scottish, men met in a pub in Seville on
January 25 that year to celebrate Burns Night.
Along with some
Spanish friends, they decided to form the country’s first official
football club, and, word having reached back to Dundee, 'The Courier'
carried an article documenting the club’s act of constitution.
As a result, current members of the club say the article can be considered the founding document of Sevilla FC.
The
president of Sevilla FC, José María del Nido, was presented with a copy
of the page, certified by the British Newspaper Archive, by the club’s
history department on January 25, 123 years after the club’s formation.
Another print of the page will be presented by the club to the Spanish FA.
Grant
Millar, marketing executive of Dundee online company brightsolid, which
hosts the online version of the British Newspaper Archive, was told of
the presentations by Spanish researcher Javier Terenti.
Javier
said: “The page in question contains a treasure for the history of
Spanish football, since it is an article that describes in detail how
the club was founded 15 years earlier than it was thought, thus being
Spain’s oldest football club."
The article that is extremely rich in detail shows how the club’s founding date was not a coincidence.
Everything
suggests that that Saturday 25 January, 123 years ago, a group of young
British, mainly Scots, along with other young men of Spanish origin,
met at one of the cafes in the city and celebrated Burns Night with the
excuse of founding the first football club in Spain.
Among the
most prominent Scots was the club’s first president, EF Johnston, and
first captain, Hugo MacColl, who later, upon returning to the UK, became
chairman of Sunderland Burns Club.
The discovery of the club’s
Act of Constitution within an old edition of the Dundee Courier has been
published not only in Spain but also in several important newspapers
outside the country.
Mr Carlos Romero, director of the club’s
history department, said: It’s a beautiful article that chronicles the
adventures of those first ‘Sevillistas’, in which the following
paragraph appears: ‘Some six weeks ago a few enthusiastic young
residents of British origin met in one of the cafés for the purpose of
considering a proposal that we should start an athletic association, the
want of exercise being greatly felt by the majority of us, who are
chiefly engaged in mercantile pursuits. After a deal of talk and a
limited consumption of small beer, the “Club de Football de Sevilla” was
duly formed and office bearers elected.'
Mr Millar added: “The
reason why this important report was published in the Dundee Courier is
probably due to the fact that, at that time, tonnes and tonnes of
Seville oranges were loaded on steamships, travelling from Seville to
Dundee for the manufacture of the city’s famous marmalade."
“However,
this connection between Seville and Dundee could even go further if we
take into account that two of the members of the Sevilla Football Club
at that time, D. Thomson and Robert Thomson, could have been related to
DC Thomson, founders of the Dundee Courier.”
Published by The Courier
Alan Wilson
7 February 2013
