Football Club Barcelona are a football club who play in the Primera Division – the top tier of of football in Spain. They are commonly known as Barcelona or “Barça” and are based in the city of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain.
Barcelona FC were founded in 1889 by a group of Swiss, English and Catalan footballers led by a man named Joan Gamper. After some initial success winning the Campionat de Catalunya and the Copa del Rey, Barcelona found itself on the edge of extinction in 1908. Gamper refused to let the club die, becoming Club President on five separate occasions between 1908 and 1925. He was instrumental in ensuring that the club owned it’s own stadium.
As is common with many Spanish clubs, FC Barcelona are owned and operated by their supporters. The FC Barcelona jersey has almost always been blue and red vertical stripes, with horizontal stripes only being used once in their history in 2015-2016. The colours of their shirts has led to their nickname “Blaugrana”, which comes from the Catalan words for blue and deep red.
The original FC Barcelona logo was a quartered diamond crest topped by the crown of Aragon and the bat of King James. This was surrounded by two branches – one of a laurel tree and the other a palm.
In 1910 the club held a competition to design a new crest, which was won by a player by the name of Carles Comamala. This crest has survived to this day with a few minor modifications. It consisted of the Cross of St George in one corner with the Catalan flag beside it and the team colours at the bottom.
Prior to 2011-2012 the club had a tradition of avoiding corporate sponsorship on shirts. They had for five years prior to that carried the name of UNICEF on the shirts with a donation of €1.5million per year to the organisation via the FC Barcelona. In recent years Barcelona has been sponsored by Qatar Sports Investments, meaning firstly the Qatar Foundation and then Qatar Airways was printed on their shirts. They have been joined by Intel, Beko and Gatorade.
The derby between the two big clubs in Spain is fierce and reflects not only the rivalry between the teams but also the rivaly of the two cities and the regions of Castile and Catalonia.
During the Francoist regime Real Madrid was the team of the establishment while Barcelona represented the banned culture and language of the Catalans. For many fans the only way they could express their cultural identity was through FC Barcelona and as such the club became known as “More than a club” (Mes que un club) – something which survives even to this day. Barcelona was granted profit by Franco however due it’s good relationship with the dictator at management level, even giving him two awards.
FC Barcelona are famous for having a wide range of great players playing for them. In recent times Lionel Messi has become the most famous of all, becoming the leading goalscorer for the club and among the top five appearance-makers for the club since making his debut in 2004. Barcelona FC’s appearance record is held by Xavi, who made 767 appearances in total for the Blaugrana between 1998 and 2015.
Many FC Barcelona players have advanced to the first team through their “cantera” policy of bringing young players through their academy at La Masia and into the first team. Xavi, who was born in Terrassa in the province of Barcelona joined La Masia at 11 while Lionel Messi came to play at La Masia at the age of 14 from Newell’s Old Boys in his native Argentina.
Barcelona FC have had five FIFA World Players and six Ballon d’Or winners play for them. They had five players and their Coach named to the UEFA team of the year in 2009 when they won an unprecedented “sextuple” – 2008-9 La Liga, 2008-9 Copa Del Rey, 2009 Supercopa de Espana, 2008-9 UEFA Champions League, 2009 European Super Cup and 2009 FIFA Club World Cup.
FC Barcelona play at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona. Camp Nou means “new field” in Catalan. The stadium has a capacity of 99,354, making it the largest stadium by capacity in Spain, the largest in Europe and the third largest football stadium in the world.
The club originally played at Camp de la Industria, which had a capacity of about 6,000. This was seen to be too small for a club with a growing membership and in 1922, using money lent to the club by its supporters Barcelona FC built Camp de Les Corts, which had a capacity of 20,000 spectators. This was expanded continually after the Spanish Civil war until held around 60,000 fans in the 1950s.
The club started building Camp Nou in 1954 and was completed in 1957. Thirty years later, Barcelona offered supporters the chance to inscribe their name in bricks for a small fee, which then raised money to help modernise the stadium. There was some controversy when it emerged one brick had been inscribed with the name of long time Real Madrid supporter and Francoist Santiago Bernabeu.