Oldest football clubs
[1] While the first clubs emerged in Britain, possibly as early as the fifteenth century, these are poorly-documented and defunct.
For example, the records of the Brewers' Company of London between 1421 and 1423 mention the hiring out of their hall "by the "football players" for "20 pence", under the heading "Trades and Fraternities".
[4] The club played its matches – for example between London-based natives of Cumberland and Westmorland – at the Kennington Common from well before 1789 until about 1800.
[5] The only surviving club rules forbade tripping, but allowed pushing and holding and the picking up of the ball.
[7] On Christmas Day 1841, an early documented match between two self-described "football clubs" took place.
[18] However, as of 2018, Barnes RFC's website claims only that the club was established in the 1920s, while alluding to "possibilities" that its history stretches back to 1862.
[25] According to Charles Astor Bristed, in the early 1840s at Cambridge, there were games played between clubs from colleges and houses.
- A match will be played in the College Park today (Saturday) between original and new members of the club.
The football contests take place in the Bois de Boulogne, by permission of the authorities and surprise the French amazingly".
The biggest success of the club was the qualification for the Rugby European Challenge Cup 2018/19 - only to be denied participation, because their main sponsor owns Stade Français.
[citation needed] The first association football in Germany (and likely the first outside Great Britain) was Dresden English, founded on 18 March 1874.
The club had over 70 members by then, primarily Englishmen working in Dresden, with its matches being attended by hundreds of spectators.
[citation needed] The oldest still active association football club is BFC Germania 1888 founded on 15 April 1888.
There are other old teams like Műegyetemi AFC founded in autumn 1897 as a proper football club and III.
is the oldest active football club: it was founded by Charles De Grave Sells, S. Green, George Blake, W. Rilley, George Dormer Fawcus, H.M. Sandys, E. De Thierry, Johnathan Summerhill Sr., Johnathan Summerhill Jr. and Sir Charles Alfred Payton in Genoa on 7 September 1893.
Shortly after gaining the independence in 1918, a Kybartai local of a German descent has purchased a ball, leveled out a football pitch, and gathered a team together.
[44] Koninklijke HFC was the first Dutch rugby club, established on 15 September 1879 by the 14-year-old Pim Mulier, who first encountered the sport in 1870.
[45] The oldest currently existing football club within Poland's current borders is widely considered to be Cracovia, but this is disputed by their Kraków arch-rivals Wisła Kraków; both clubs were founded in 1906,[46] however there are multiple proofs that Wisła is younger.
[47] Resovia also lay claim to this distinction; the disputes centre around registration, continuity of a given team, and sources.
[51] Founded on 23 December 1889, Recreativo de Huelva is the oldest football club in Spain.
[citation needed] The oldest continuing association football club is Tokyo Shukyu-Dan, founded in 1917.
Their rivals to the east, the Toronto Argonauts, were founded four years later, in 1873, and have a mostly unchanged franchise history.
[64] However, university-affiliated teams competing in intercollegiate championships are not typically classified as "clubs".
Its rules allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it if he were chased and it quickly spread, with innovations added by Yale University student Walter Camp.
The oldest existing non-university semiprofessional football club is the Watertown Red & Black, which was founded in 1896.
[68] It is however believed that the club was founded in 1831, with existing documentary evidence about a cricket match played by Buenos Aires that same year.
[74][75] This places Mercedes above Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata[76] and Quilmes, both founded in 1887.
[77] After football retired from competitions in 1912, rugby union became the main sport of SPAC.
[79] Santiago Wanderers was founded on 15 August 1892 by Irish community and was the first football club in Chile.
[citation needed] Cali Football Club was formed in 1908 by students under the leadership of Nazario Lalinde, Juan Pablo Lalinde and Fidel Lalinde, who came back from Europe bringing football to the city of Cali, but in 1912 the students under the leadership of the three Lalinde brothers organized the team and renamed it as Deportivo Cali Lima Cricket and Football Club claims to be the oldest football-practising club in Peru and the Americas,[80] having been founded in 1859 by the city's British community.
