Colombia - Page loaded 21.11.2008 04:56:02 COT

The beginnings of football in Colombia

Sunday 3 February 2008 0:10 COT

This image was taken in La Magdalena court (now “calle 39th” in Bogotá), before a football game between Polo Club and colonel Lemly’s Military School. On the picture we can see, among others, Ulpiano Valenzuela, Alejandro Santamaría, Carlos Obregón, Carlos Dávila, Ignacio Barberi, Julio Sáenz, Pepe Obregón (Team captain), Juan Uribe de Brigard, and Carlos Sanz.

For a long time, the thesis that the cities of the Colombian Atlantic Coast were the pioneers in the country in practising the modern football, -as established by the English colleges and public schools in the end of 19th century-, was regarded as the strongest one, provided that the historians were based on documents of that time, such as photographs, press articles regarding to the facts and testimonies given by people that were at the events, all kept for the posterity in several books on the history of Colombian football.

Journalist Mike Urueta set 1903 as the starting point of the national football, since British engineers that worked in the construction of the railroad between Barranquilla and Puerto Colombia brought within their suitcases, along with personal stuffs, some balls, with which they taught local workers how to kick the leather ball with their feet.

To confirm the genuineness of their position, Urueta has even pointed out the colour of the uniforms that they wore in those first informal games between the teams of English engineers and Colombian railroad workers. Those colours could not be other than the ones from the Union Jack (the flag of the United Kingdom): red, white and blue. The columnist also mentions the exact place in which was the football court, in a fallow of the La María farmland. What is more, he gives the names of several of the footballers who took part in those first matches: From the English team, Hendrich L. H. Hutton, William Matheus, Joseph Clark, J. L. Jamesmith, R. W. Hutton, Harry L. Tyror, Arthur Snowden, George Pycross, Leo Hothersoll, Ed Stapleton (nicknamed Míster Jacket) and Geo Hughes. And on the railroad workers’ side were, among others, Abraham Méndez, Macabeo Flórez, Vicente and Juan de las Salas, Luis Guzmán, Hernando Ñato Botero and Juan Patacoja Steffens.

In the next years, this first football experience in Barranquilla was continued in Santa Marta, in 1909, as the banana boom attracted the bay lots of ships with English sailors that also brought among its belongings football balls. In El Playón, they set the first court, where the teams of the British marines and the native employees of the United Fruit Company became the main attraction on Friday afternoons, before weighing anchors with the ships loaded with bananas.

Until 1987, stories like the previously mentioned and other ones ratified the historical truthfulness of the beginning of Colombian football in the Atlantic Coast, and it seemed unquestionable. The tireless investigation of Mauricio Liévano led him to pay attention to an old and forgotten collection of documents gathered by the journalist Luis Pompilio Bejarano, concerning to the last decades of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th. The result was astonishing.

Colonel Henry Round Lemly

According to the documents compiled by Bejarano and rescued by Liévano, in 1880 American colonel Henry Round Lemly (or Rowan Lemly) arrived in to the country, with the purpose of organizing what would be the first Military School of Cadets, the predecessor of the one that was re-established in 1907 during general Rafael Reyes‘ government. Lemly had known football in his continuous trips to Europe, and he foresaw this incipient sport as a magnificent possibility to increase the agility and physical skills of the future high officers of the National Army. To achieve this goal, in 1887, and taking advantage of a visit to England, he brought to Colombia some copies of the unified rules issued by The Football Association in 1863, along with balls, uniforms and football shoes with spikes.

Obviously, Lemly arrived from Europe aboard a ship to Atlantic Coast, but he didn’t stay there in any moment, because he had to go to Bogotá, that was the city where he lived and worked. The cadets of his academy were the first Colombians in practising football. The teams played in a court located in what is now known as “Parque de Los Mártires” (Park of The Martyrs).

According to Liévano, the validity of this theory is supported by three documents of that time: The first one, dated in 1892, is an article published on the newspaper El Telegrama, of Bogotá, commenting the practice of football in Lemly’s academy: “One of the most popular games that have been settled down in foreign schools, is the one of the ball or football, like English people say, which has arrived to our country some time ago. This game is hygienic because it gives force, agility and it strengthens the body. The gentleman colonel Lemly has established it in the Military School. At once, we publish the text of the rules to play this game in the academy…"

The second document quoted by Liévano and Bejarano, is from the same newspaper, and also in 1892, about the presence of Colombian President Miguel Antonio Caro in a football game at the Military School on 22 June, “accompanied by his whole ministerial cabinet, army authorities and the most outstanding celebrities of the high society in Bogotá…”

And the third proof of the existence of football in the Colombian capital at the end of 19th century is a picture of the first football team of Polo Club, in 1896. Other clubs of Bogotá elite, influenced by the trips to Europe of their distinguished members, created two more teams: “Bogotá” and “Cambridge.”

This article was originally published 14 January 2008 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Rafa XII.

Tags: Barranquilla, Colombia, football, Henry Round Lemly, Luis Pompilio Bejarano, Mauricio Liévano, Mike Urueta, Santa Marta, soccer, sports, Union Jack