⚽ Club origin stories

Who doesn’t like an origin story? When it comes to Brazilian football, delving into the foundations of the country’s national passion can be fascinating, and the 20 clubs in the current Série A provide an educational range of tales.

There are bitter splits, pioneering students, immigrant enclaves, and a whole lot of rowing. This is how the clubs that form one of the world’s most colorful and historic football cultures started.

Founded in the southern city of Curitiba in 1924, Club Athletico Paranaense (the preferred spelling at the time) was the result of a merger between local clubs América and International. Athletico is one of several examples of Brazilian football clubs created to be “open for all,” in contrast to other organizations that only accepted members from particular European immigrant communities.

With the 1931 Portuguese spelling reform, the club became known as Atlético Paranaense, but reclaimed its historic H in 2018, along with a full club rebrand.

Also founded with an H in its name, but some 16 years earlier, was Atlético Mineiro, the oldest club from the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte still in operation. A group of football-mad middle-class students decided to form the club, and they would win the first edition of the Minas Gerais state championship in 1915.

Atlético is one of the few Brazilian football clubs, perhaps best known for its nickname. In the 1930s, Atlético’s brave and unyielding performances on the pitch earned them the nickname “the Rooster,” or Galo.

While the state championship in Bahia is the second-oldest in Brazil, playing its first edition in 1905 (only São Paulo’s is older), the most popular club in the capital of Salvador didn’t even emerge for another quarter-century.

Esporte Clube Bahia officially came to life in…

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