19 October 2012
Marmalade United
So what is the connection between Seville and Dundee? Heard of James Keiler? If you’ve just answered ‘marmalade’, well done! Form a team, and apply to BBC TV’s 'Only Connect'.
And in that exotic connection (the export of bitter Seville oranges to Scotland for boiling with sugar and water) may lie the origin of association football in Andalusia - indeed perhaps in the whole of Spain.
This has come to light in a rediscovered report in the Dundee Courier, dated 17 March 1890, now digitised and available through the British Newspaper Archive website (see Note below).
On 25 January 1890, a group of ex-pat British traders based in Seville decided to get together for regular football practice. After a few 5-a-side training games, they invited some friends from Huelva over for a proper match, played under FA rules. Seville won 2-0.
The Dundee Courier report is entitled ‘First Football Match in Spain’. While this may or may not have been the case (how could we know?), the revelation is in the following sentence:
After a deal of talk and a limited consumption of small beer, the Club de Football de Sevilla was duly formed and officebearers elected.
And that’s what getting Spanish football fans, especially los aficionados de Sevilla, excited. The explicit mention of a constitution means that FC Sevilla was founded in 1890, rather than 1905 as previously thought: evidence that makes Sevilla the oldest football club in Spain (Real Madrid was founded in 1902, for example). The research, undertaken by the history department of FC Sevilla, was quickly picked up by Spanish blogs (such as La Palagana Mecanica) and on Twitter, which is where we saw it.
You can read about this story in detail, and see the original newspaper article, on the official blog of the British Newspaper Archive.
So here's an example of what you can discover from online digitised material, provided that it’s fully searchable and you know what you are looking for.
Colin Wight
Note
The British Newspaper Archive is a partnership between the British Library and brightsolid online publishing to digitise up to 40 million newspaper pages from the British Library's vast collection over the next 10 years.