The Municipal Stadium in Concepción. One of the earliest football sides in Chile, El English, was based in this city.
IN 1909, David Foxley Newton founded a football club in Cerro Alegre, Valparaíso, and named it ‘Everton’ after the prestigious team from Liverpool which had recently toured Argentina.*
It was by no means a first. British merchants had established a trading base in Valparaíso in 1826, and since then other British-heritage Chileans had started sporting clubs: Mackay and Sutherland FC met on school playing fields in the same Valparaíso suburb in 1882, and in 1889 David Scott started a soccer team at the Badminton cricket club.
The first game between sides from two different cities, Scott’s Valparaíso and Santiago Club, and the first international, against an Argentinian side composed entirely of British nationals, both kicked off in 1893.
Encouraged by Chilean football’s first governing body, formed in 1895, and aided by footballs imported from England, club after club sprang up with names such as Wanderers, Rangers, Morning Star, and El English, forming the basis of today’s passionate Chilean Football League.**
Valparaíso’s importance comes from its position at the Pacific end of the Straits of Magellan, which allow ships in the Atlantic to cross the American Continent without braving the wild seas of Chile’s Cape Horn to the south.
** Contrary to appearances, top-flight side O’Higgins in Rancagua is named in honour not of a club founder but of Bernardo O’Higgins Riquelme (1778–1842), a landowner of Spanish and Irish descent who is considered one of the Founding Fathers of Chile.
Précis
The first football clubs in Chile were founded in the 1880s by Chileans of British heritage, descendants of merchants who had settled in Valparaíso. They founded the first governing federation in 1895, and organised club and international matches, and their influence is reflected in English-sounding team names such as Everton and Rangers. (52 / 60 words)
