7 Football Clubs Named After REAL People

here in england the names of football clubs follow a pretty simple format it tends to be the name of a place followed by a suffolk such as city town united or albion or simply the words football club there are some exceptions to that rule port vale are the only football league team not to be named after a place and the likes of plymouth argyle nottingham forest and sheffield wednesday all have unique suffixes within the efl but that is child's play compared to the inventive names conjured up by the founders of football clubs in a number of different countries the mls is home to the likes of los angeles galaxy san jose earthquakes and my personal favorites real salt lake there is a football club in ghana that i follow loosely called cape coast eber sewer dwarfs and the bolivian primera division has a particularly strong name game going on featuring the likes of always ready blooming and of course the strongest weather phenomenon ghanaian dwarfs and adjectives are all well and good but i was recently asked if there were any football clubs that are named after real people and if so could i make a video about them the answer to the first question is yes there are lots especially if you are to include saints and both ancient or mythical figures such as hercules and diax by my count there are over 20 football clubs named after spartacus alone including a whopping seven of them solely based in russia i have discounted such examples because there are so many of them and some of them albeit not spartacus probably weren't actually real people the answer to the second question was also yes since personally i found this video absolutely fascinating both in terms of researching the people themselves and then why there is a football club named after them some are utterly bizarre honourable mentions for example go to club atletico douglas hague in argentina who are named after sir douglas hague a victorious british general during world war one or club deportivo louis angel fairpo in el salvador who renamed themselves in honour of the argentine boxer louis angel fairpow after he became the first latin american to challenge for the world heavyweight title and knocked jack dempsey out of the ring despite dempsey battling back to win the bout hopefully you will find it as interesting to watch as i did to research then so here are seven football clubs that are named after real people seventh botsev plov death a football club that i suspect most of you will probably have heard of at some stage even if you don't know a great deal about them botsev plovdiff are the oldest active football club in bulgaria and they featured in the europa qualifying stages on three occasions since 2013 albeit failing to qualify for the group stages on each occasion these days whatever named after both bulgarian national hero christo bottev and the city that they call home plovdiff which is the second largest city in the country but originally when they were founded in 1912 the club was just called christobotsev and they are still most commonly referred to simply as bota non-bulgarian viewers are unlikely to know a great deal about christo motev i know i didn't until a few hours ago but he was a poet and author who was at the forefront of the bulgarian renaissance movement before leading a revolution and all that in a life that unfortunately spanned just 28 years for someone who is not much younger than that now it really puts things into perspective as to just how little i have achieved botev was born in bulgaria whilst the country was occupied by the ottoman empire and his public opposition to the ottoman authorities and wealthy bulgarians who bottomed accused of collaborating with the ottomans saw him exile to romania bottev became a close friend of the leader of the bulgarian revolutionary movement vasilevskiy whilst the two were roommates living in an abandoned mill together just outside of bucharest and after levski was captured and hung by the ottoman authorities botsev became the new leader of the movement despite having no combat experience bot have devised an ingenious plan for crossing into ottoman territory without alerting the authorities by disguising his troops as gardeners before seizing their steamship on route it turned out to be a relatively easy task since botev's powers of persuasion were such that following an impassioned speech the ship's captain actually gave botev his full support and later even refused to allow the ottomans to use his ship in pursuit of botev's rebel forces unfortunately bulgarian revolutionary sustained enormous losses during the april uprising including bottev himself who was killed by a single shot to the chest just two years after his death though bulgaria became a semi-autonomous state which was still part of the ottoman empire but functioned largely independently bulgaria declared full independence from the ottoman empire in 1908 and botev is today remembered as a national icon with towns streets schools and of course a football club named after him namely bhotev plovdif who have won two bulgarian championships and three bulgarian cups and have since 2021 been owned by russian businessman anson zingarovich who previously owned english club reading sixth club deportivo jorge vilsteman i said in the introduction that bolivia is home to some banging football club names and it is a fantastically named bolivian primary division outfit that features in sixth place club deportivo jorge vilstemann better known as siri jorge vilstermann or most commonly of all just wilsterman are one of the big boys of bolivian football having been crowned as bolivian champions 15 times the joint second most of any club tied with the strongest and trailing only bolivar wilsterman were founded in 1949 by a group of workers from lloyd arrow boliviano which was bolivia's principal airline from 1925 up until its demise in 2010 and was headquartered in the city of kochibamba which is where the team is based initially the club was named san jose de la bander but in 1953 manager jose rico upon the suggestion of commander walter lem changed the club's name to siri jorge wilstermann the local airport was also renamed jorge vilstermann international airport upon lem's suggestion but just who was jorge vilstermann since i would be willing to wager that the number of you who have heard of him who are watching this video is in the single digits well rather aptly wilsterman was bolivia's first commercial pilot and therefore also lloyd arrow boliviano's first pilot who tragically died in a plane crash at the age of only 25 in 1955 wilstermann the football club this is turned professional and their golden era began shortly after that from 1958 to 1960 wilsterman won three successive national championships a feat that no other bolivian team has since been able to replicate beginning a legacy of success which has carried on throughout the decades ensuring that the name jorge wilstermann bolivia's first commercial pilot is never forgotten fifth o'higgins football club staying in south america and actually heading west to bolivia's neighbor's chile o'higgins football club sometimes referred to as o'higgins the rankawa are named after one of chile's two founding fathers and the country's first supreme director of the patria nueva era all right i can already tell that i've lost you but rest assured i will claw you back as bernardo o'higgins is a man who is just as interesting as his name would suggest a member of the irish noble o'higgins family o'higgins was born to an irish spanish father who was the viceroy of peru and a chilean mother in the chilean city of chilean because of his father's wealth and status o'higgins was sent to london to complete his education where he met the venezuelan revolutionary francisco de miranda miranda had a profound effect upon o'higgins and after napoleon took control of spain and appointed his brother as the new king of spain o'higgins became a key figure in chile's pro-independence movement when the spanish tried to reconquer chile despite suffering from ill health o'higgins mobilized a local militia where his courage and seeming fearlessness turned him into a legend the chilean war of independence ended up spanning some 16 years but resulted in a victory for the patriots and defeat for the royalists chile underwent great reform after o'higgins became supreme director but his support of democracy and opposition to nobility angered chile's aristocrats and the church which led to him being overthrown in a conservative coup in 1923. o'higgins spent the rest of his days living in peru but now enjoys a largely positive legacy in chile immortalized by among many other things o'higgins football club founded through a merger in 1955 o'higgins won their first chilean championship in 2013 exactly 200 years on from bernardo o'higgins becoming commander in chief of the chilean army fourth kerala blasters it is rare for a football club to be named after a real person but it is even rarer for them to be named after a person who is still alive that is the case with kerala blasters though whose name pays homage to indian cricket legend sachin tendulkar and yes you can say that something pays homage without that person being dead although i did have to google to double check that now those of you who aren't particularly familiar with all things cricket related might quite reasonably be thinking to yourselves how are kerala blasters named after sachin tendulkar surely that would have to be kerala tendulkar or something like that but tendulkar's nickname throughout his playing career as one of the greatest batsmen in the entire history of the sport was the master blaster tendulkar's prowess when it came to india's favorite pastime made him incredibly wealthy and when the indian super league was founded in 2013 to try and raise the profile of football within the country tendulkar wanted in kerala along with west bengal is one of the two states in india where football is most popular in april 2014 it was announced that tendulkar and his business partner prasad vipatlori had acquired the rights to an isl team in the region and the following month the club's name was revealed among the most popular football clubs not just in india but in all of asia having had record attendances in excess of 60 000 the club's average attendance in their debut campaign was more than 55 000 the club's first player coach and marky signing was the former england number one david james whose successes have since included the likes of peter taylor steve koppel and renee muellenstein three-time isl runners-up but yet to get their hands on a league title tendulkar sold 80 of the club's ownership rights to a group of bollywood actors and producers in 2016 and his remaining 20 stake in 2018 but the club still bears his nickname that he bestowed it with eight years ago third newell's old boys newell's old boys are a hugely significant football club not just in argentina but in a global context having helped to nurture the likes of maurizio pochettino gabrielle batistuta and lionel messi prior to his move to barcelona who offered to cover the treatment of his growth hormone deficiency news was also briefly home to diego armando maradona and their stadium the estadio marcela the elsa is named after former lead united boss mars celebi elsa who was previously employed by news as a player scout and manager before going on to spend six years managing argentina a stadium isn't bad going marcelo well done and all that but if you think that's impressive a school teacher from kent had the entire club named after him isaac newell grew up in kent at a time when football was in its infancy in england but was enjoying an enormous surge in popularity newell was already passionate about football when he boarded a ship setting sail for argentina at the age of only 16 and after 15 years working for the central argentine railway newell founded the collegio commercial anglicano argentino in rosario where he taught english alongside academic studies newell also implemented a strong sporting programme with football taking center stage in 1903 four years before newell's death mule's old boys were founded as a football club that would be represented by teachers students and alumni of the college hence why the team took on your's name newell's son claudio muell was also one of the team's principal founders and 118 years and six argentine championships later one of argentina's most historic football clubs still bears the name of a man who pioneered football in the country second willemsvay inevitably a lot of football clubs named after real people are named after royals the only two english football clubs that i could find that play at a semi-decent level and are named after real people namely northwich victoria and crew alexandra are both named after british queens queen victoria in northwich victoria's case and alexander of denmark in crew alexandra's case who was the queen of the united kingdom and the british dominions and empress of india from 1901 to 1910 i know whilst her husband edward vii was king villains they are an even more high-profile example as three-time dutch champions whose former players include the likes of yap stam mark overmars virgil van dijk and frankie deyoung founded in 1896 as tilbergia since the club is based in the city of tillberg they renamed themselves villam tvay in 1898 after the dutch king villain tv who is anglicized as william ii of the netherlands the reason being that willem spay as commander of the dutch army had his military headquarters in tilburg during the belgian uprising of 1830 and he spent many years living there after becoming king and even died there at the age of 56. a pragmatist and moderate villain tv was actually a very significant monarch since despite his own deep-rooted conservatism he presided over numerous liberal reforms in the netherlands including the country's transition to becoming a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy with its own constitution in 1848 villain only did so through fear of the 1848 revolutions across europe spreading to the netherlands and through the desire for self-preservation but you know it worked villainsvay the football club i am referring to now haven't been crowned as dutch champion since 1955 though they were aerodynamized runners-up in 1999 and they currently compete in the established having been relegated from the top flight last season first vasco de gama we end with a man with not one not two but three different football clubs named after him and four if you include a now defunct team named vasco de gama from south africa i am aware it should be said that all seven inclusions are clubs named after men and not women despite me giving mention to the two english teams named after former royal women but before you all rush to cancel me i have actually just illustrated the structural sexism in football team names which exists across the world and for that i should probably be thanked vasco de gamma was a portuguese explorer and the first european to reach india by sea his voyage to india right at the end of the 1400s is considered a landmark moment in history as it merged the continents of europe and asia by sea paving the way for massive global imperialism and the expansion of the portuguese empire throughout much of asia and africa so yeah thanks vasco that was great it should be said that i'm not just woke scolding a portuguese explorer from 500 years ago like so many european explorers de gama was a truly wretched human being even by the standards of the day often referred to as portugal's columbus that nickname is more act than you might think as de gamma had an equally brutal reputation renowned for the violence hostage-taking and willingness to threaten unarmed civilians at gunpoint upon his voyages in 1502 de gama's fleet infamously intercepted a ship of muslim pilgrims travelling to mecca looted the ship locked the more than 400 passengers on board including more than 50 women and burnt them all to death the lives of the 20 children on board were spared but only on the proviso that they agreed a forced conversion from islam to christianity yeah lovely bloke you might wonder why de gama has a city and goa a crater on the moon and multiple different football clubs named after him then but just like christopher columbus de gama was celebrated for centuries especially by the portuguese and brazilian outfit vasco de gama based in rio de janeiro the most famous football club that is named after him were founded by portuguese immigrants to brazil despite an illustrious past which includes four campionato brasileiro syria titles and a copper libertadores crown in 1998 vasco currently compete in syria b having been relegated from brazil's top flight for a fourth time in 2020 that is it for today's video i could have included the likes of colo colo club presidente hayes and a litany of other teams named after real people but i felt that i picked out seven interesting examples and if you agree feel free to hit the like button let me know your thoughts down below in the comments and make sure you're subscribed and of notifications turned on for hitc sevens you can also find me on either twitter or instagram via the username at hitc7 on both should you wish to do so

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 67,348

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, Clubs, Teams, Names, Named, Real, People, Premier League, Champions League, Vasco da Gama, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Botev Plovdiv, Willem II, Eredivisie, Kerala Blasters, Indian Super League

Id: l2lGT4Iwyps

Length: 19min 45sec (1185 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2022