Football in Spain
[12] The Spain national football team once won the FIFA World Cup and succeeded in the UEFA European Championship and the Olympic tournament.
[20] In all categories, Spain's men's national teams have won 27 titles in FIFA, UEFA, and Olympic tournaments within the European continent and beyond.
In economic terms, during 2013, professional football generated more than €7.6 billion, including direct, indirect, and induced effects, representing 0.75% of the Spanish GDP.
[22] Modern football was introduced to Spain in the late 19th century by a combination of mostly British immigrant workers, visiting sailors, and Spanish students returning from Britain.
[38][39][40] In the late 1870s, various English workers scattered throughout the peninsula began to establish informal groups that were dedicated to different recreational practices, especially cricket and football, particularly in Spanish ports of Vigo, Andalusia, Huelva, Seville, and Bilbao.
[38] Meanwhile, in Vigo, a group of British workers for the Eastern Telegraph Company arrived there from Porthcurno, a small isolated town in the far west of England, thus earning the nickname "Exiles".
The earliest known example of this dates to March 1888, when the club played football and cricket matches against the mariners of a merchant ship called Jane Cory.
[44][48] This society developed into the oldest official football club in Spain, Recreativo de Huelva, founded in December 1889 by two Scottish doctors of the Rio Tinto Company, Alexander Mackay and Robert Russell Ross.
[44] The first official football match in Spain was contested between Sevilla FC and Recreativo de Huelva in Seville on 8 March 1890, at an abandoned mine near Calle Sanz.
[57] In November 1892, the president of Club Atleta, Enrique Jones Bird, successfully asked for permission to play in the Hippodrome of Lamiako, which thus became the new home of organized football in the Basque Country.
[65] The last game of the season on 12 March 1893 was the subject of the first proper chronicle of a football match in Spain, appearing in La Dinastía.
[38] Other clubs founded in 1900 – such as Escocès FC (previously Sant Andreu), Hispania AC (previously Team Rojo), University SC, FC Internacional, and Irish Football Club – competed for local support in the first competitions, including the first-ever tournament held in Spain, the Copa Macaya.
[76] In these years, Athletic was the most dominant club in the country, and the first idols in Spain began to appear, like Pichichi and Paulino Alcántara.
[39][78] The success of the Spanish national team in the Olympic Games, which won the silver medal, was huge in the development of football as a mass social event in Spain.
[79] After the Olympic triumph, football experienced a popularity boost among Spanish fans, and as a result, stadium attendance increased, and the pressure of professionalism grew.
[81] An agreement between several clubs was made on November 23, 1928, officially establishing Spain's national football division and the birth of the Spanish League.
As of 2013[update], Real Madrid and Barcelona were at the top of the Forbes list of most valuable football teams, while the remaining Spanish clubs had a debt of around €4.1 billion.
[87] This record has since been broken again, with the highest attendance for a Spanish women's football match being the game at Camp Nou with FC Barcelona against VfL Wolfsburg on 22 April 2022, at 91,648 fans.
[39][78] Since then, the Spain national team has participated in fifteen of twenty-one FIFA World Cups and nine out of fourteen UEFA European Championships.
Historically, the Spain national team did not achieve important results in terms of trophies or develop an attractive playing style.
A place in the top 10 of the FIFA World Rankings was secured for Spain in 2021, when their players won all categories of the UEFA awards, the first time this was done all from one nation.
In April 1927, Álvaro Trejo, a director at Arenas Club de Getxo, first proposed the idea of a national league in Spain.
Historically, some of the best football players in the world have played in the Spanish football league, including Ricardo Zamora, Josep Samitier, Alfredo Di Stéfano, Ladislav Kubala, Ferenc Puskás, Raymond Kopa, Héctor Rial, Telmo Zarra, Francisco Gento, Luis Suárez, Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona, Bernd Schuster, Andoni Zubizarreta, Michael Laudrup, Hristo Stoichkov, Romário, Zinedine Zidane, Rivaldo, Ronaldo, Raúl, Ronaldinho, Carles Puyol, Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Iker Casillas, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Lionel Messi, among others.
[93] In La Liga's 90-year history (except the three seasons in which the league was suspended due to the civil war), Barcelona and Real Madrid have won 60 titles.
Most countries were still recovering from a long and devastating World War II and could not participate in the competition due to financial or political reasons.
In addition, other Spanish clubs have also won titles in international tournaments, such as Valencia, Atlético Madrid, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Villarreal, Deportivo de La Coruña, Celta Vigo, and Málaga.
As for the legacy result from the totalitarian and repressive Francisco Franco regime, there has been a strong sense of racial segregation in Spanish football, whereas racism and previous tensions are frequently used to exploit as a sign of defiance, which has contributed to the lack of national success of Spain in international football despite its enormous talents and club powers; it is strongly reflected in Basque Country and Catalunya.
[96] The famed El Clásico in Spain between Real Madrid and Barcelona has been marred with several issues in the relationship between ethnic Catalans.
[99][100] Catalan-born players and coaches like Xavi, Carles Puyol, and Pep Guardiola have strongly demonstrated the idea of an independent Catalunya, which often creates chaos several times.
[102][103] Basque football officials have tried unsuccessfully to gain recognition from the UEFA and FIFA several times as a separate team from Spain.
