Bilbao Football Club

Bilbao Football Club was a football team based in Bilbao, Spain, which existed during the years 1900 and 1903. In 1902 they combined with city rivals Athletic Club to form Club Vizcaya, a team which won the 1902 Copa de la Coronación. The following year they were absorbed by Athletic Club. History Background Football arrived in Bilbao at the end of the 19th century, thanks to British visiting sailors and immigrant workers, such as the British employees of the Nervión Shipyards, located in Sestao (Vizcaya), who in 1889 formed a multi-sports club called Club Atleta, who began to play against crews of English ships coming from Portsmouth and Southampton and Sunderland. It was around this time that a group of British workers in the region (not linked to the shipyards) formed a team known as the Bilbao Football Club, which was also made up of British residents in the region, but not linked to the shipyards, such as Alfred Mills, who was a telegraph operator. In the winter of 1892–93, Club Atleta and Bilbao FC contested a "serious" tournament in the Hippodrome of Lamiako, a racetrack from where football took off in Bilbao, with several Bilbainos swarming the field to watch the teams of British workers challenge each other every weekend. Said tournament was won by Club Atleta, who received medals presented by James S. Clark on 22 April 1893. Origins The football fever grew quickly in the city, and thus, just two years after seven football enthusiasts belonging to the Gimnásio Zamacois, who were also usuals in Lamiako, founded Athletic Club in 1898, Carlos Castellanos, the grandson of a wealthy banker of French origin, flanked by his brother Manuel, and a group of young Bilbainos from the upper class who had studied in England, founded the Bilbao Football Club on 30 November 1900, which was not related with the Bilbao club that existed in 1892–93, formed by the British. They created the new entity in an informal meeting held in the house that José Luis de Villabaso (1852–1917) had in the Biscayan neighborhood of Algorta. The new Bilbao FC was officially established shortly after its foundation since its regulations were approved by the civil governor and printed in 1901.