Works team
The Columbus Panhandles were a famous works team; it consisted of Pennsylvania Railroad employees, including the famed Nesser Brothers, and eventually became a charter member of the National Football League.
This tradition is continued by some teams in the X-League, the highest level of American football in Japan; examples include the IBM Big Blue and Fujitsu Frontiers.
[14] Former and current works teams in Africa include Arab Contractors SC of Egypt (also a sporting club) and AS Police (Benin).
Modern examples include Honda F.C., Mitsubishi Motors Mizushima, Sony Sendai, Tokushima Vortis (founded in 1955 as Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Soccer Club) and Maruyasu Okazaki.
League specifically bars works teams from its ranks unless they professionalise and adopt the community they play in as a source of fan support.
Yokohama FC is owned by Japanese restaurant operator Onodera Group (which became also a majority shareholder of Portuguese club UD Oliveirense in November 2022) and thus can be described as a company team as well.
European former works teams that later would become noteworthy professional company teams include those of PSV Eindhoven (Philips), FC Sochaux-Montbéliard (Peugeot), Bayer Leverkusen (Bayer), VfL Wolfsburg (Volkswagen) and FC Carl Zeiss Jena (Carl Zeiss).
The club, founded in 1941 by the defence manufacturing company Székesfehérvári Vadásztölténygyár, was made up of workers of the local factory in its early years.
In the League of Ireland a number of early clubs, including St James's Gate F.C., Fordsons, Jacobs, Midland Athletic and Dundalk all had their origins as a factory or works team.
[24] The Portuguese conglomerate Companhia União Fabril (CUF) had also its own sports club, founded as a true works team in 1937.
A multisport club, besides top flight football, it housed competitive rink hockey, cycling and rowing teams and departments, among others.
[25] The club, which was a major contender in the main Portuguese Football Championship, was disbanded and replaced by G.D. Fabril due to a military coup in 1974.
Other examples include the Grupo Desportivo Riopele founded in 1958 in Vila Nova de Famalicão which was the works team of the Riopele textile factory,[26] as well as the sport club established by the Argozelo Mines in 1975 and called Centro Cultural e Desportivo Minas de Argozelo.
The oldest football club in Spain is Recreativo de Huelva, formed on 23 December 1889 by Dr. William Alexander Mackay[30] and British workers employed by the Rio Tinto Company.
FC Shakhtar Horlivka traces its roots to the Football Association of the Gorlovka Artillery Works (FOGAZ).
Several professional football clubs in the United Kingdom were also formed as works teams, including Manchester United (the team of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot at Newton Heath), Arsenal (formed as Dial Square in 1886 by workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich), West Ham United (formerly Thames Ironworks), Coventry City, founded by workers of the Singer bicycle company, and the Scottish team Livingston (formerly Ferranti Thistle).
A few amateur and semi-professional United Kingdom association football (soccer) works teams retain their companies' names, including Airbus UK, Cammell Laird, and Vauxhall Motors.
Other former and current amateur and semi-professional UK works teams include Crawley Down Gatwick F.C., Civil Service F.C., Harrogate Railway Athletic F.C., United Services Portsmouth F.C., Metropolitan Police F.C., Stewarts & Lloyds Corby A.F.C., Royal Engineers A.F.C., Atherton Collieries A.F.C., Prescot Cables F.C., Stocksbridge Park Steels F.C.
In its place the new socialist authorities which replaced the monarchy in Yugoslavia formed FK Spartak Subotica which kept tight links with the railways company.
In other parts of Yugoslavia there are other cases, in North Macedonia, FK Rabotnički became owned in 1949 by the labour union of the railways company.
Zemun, a city just in the outskirts of capital Belgrade, was known for many home-born notable players and some more or less successful football clubs ever since first half of the 1920s.
The company owned a small club, FK Galenika, however by the late 1960s they decided to play a bigger role in football.
Later, by the early 1990s the wars and the break-up of Yugoslavia started, Galenika suffered the financially asphyxiating consequences of the economic sanctions imposed to Serbia.
They managed to survive for some time during the 1990s in the First League of FR Yugoslavia, however the results were being worse each year, and by the turn of the millennium FK Zemun was relegated to the lower-leagues with just few occasional but flashy and inconsistent comebacks.
The system also provided the support for de facto professional athletes, who were employees of various non-sport agencies and enterprises and officially designated as amateurs.
Historically the most popular team in Quito, Aucas was founded and initially integrated and financed by employees of Royal Dutch Shell.
[39] Other company teams belonging to major corporations competing in the main Japanese professional baseball leagues include Chiba Lotte Marines (Lotte Holdings), Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (Nippon Ham Co., Ltd), Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles (Rakuten) and Tokyo Yakult Swallows (Yakult Honsha), among others.
The club, a company team, was founded in 1996 and was owned by Portugal Telecom, the largest telecommunications service provider in the country.
The Top League in Japan features teams such as Suntory Sungoliath, Toyota Verblitz and IBM Big Blue.
United Kingdom's rugby union too has a works team tradition going back many decades, and although the clubs have declined post professionalism in heartland countries, it has not been completely extinguished.
