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| Full name | Real Club Recreativo de Huelva, S.A.D. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nicknames | Recre Decano (Dean) Mineros (Miners) Los blanquiazules (The Blue and Whites) | |||
| Founded | 18 December 1889; 136 years ago (1889-12-18) asHuelva Recreation Club | |||
| Ground | Nuevo Colombino | |||
| Capacity | 21,670 | |||
| President | Jesús Vázquez | |||
| Head coach | Arzu | |||
| League | Segunda Federación – Group 4 | |||
| 2024–25 | Primera Federación – Group 2, 19th of 20 (relegated) | |||
| Website | recreativohuelva | |||
Real Club Recreativo de Huelva, S.A.D. (Spanish pronunciation:[reˈalˈkluβrekɾeaˈtiβoðeˈwelβa]) is aSpanish football club based inHuelva,Andalucia, Spain. Founded on 18 December 1889, they are the oldest football club in Spain,[1] and currently play inSegunda Federación – Group 4, holding home games atEstadio Nuevo Colombino, which has a 21,670 seating-capacity.
Team colours are white shirts with blue vertical stripes and white shorts.
Huelva was introduced to football by the British employees of theRio Tinto Company Limited (RTCL), who began to arrive in 1873 to work at the copper mines ofRio Tinto.[2][3][4] Huelva thus became the home to a vast British colony, among whom a certainWilliam Bice stood out, as he was the one who began organizing the first "kick-abouts" between the club's members, which were possibly the very first kick to afootball ball on Spanish soil.[3][4][a] This colony eventually gave birth to a club in 1878, the Rio Tinto English Club (known in Huelva asClub Inglés Bella Vista), where the mine workers played their favorite sports, such ascricket, rugby, andfootball.[2][3] The first president of this club was the ScotJohn Sutherland Mackay, the newly-arrived company doctor.[3] There are reports of football games between Rio Tinto and Huelva as early as 1882, but these teams were never officially established, so there is no legal record of their existence.[3]
The importance of Rio Tinto is that the British left a legacy and ended up creating the Recreativo de Huelva in 1889. There was continuity.
Rio Tinto FC was the catalyst of theSociedad de Juego de Pelota (Spanish:"Ball Game Society"), which was founded in 1884 by Dr.William Alexander Mackay, the brother of John Sutherland, who was a lover of sports and thus wanted to use physical exercise to improve the health of his patients.[5] He began organizing football and cricket games, usually between his compatriots living in Riotinto and those crews of the British ships, which were held in a large area of marshes filled with flooded soil opposite the Gas Factory run by fellow ScotsmanCharles Wilson Adam,[2][5][6] who also played in some cricket matches himself.[7]
The earliest known example of this dates dating to March 1888, when the club played football and cricket matches against the sailors of a merchant ship calledJane Cory who had just arrived in port; Mackay even invited a SpaniardIldefonso Martínez to play.[5][8] Eventually, in the late 1880s, the local population began gathering there to watch this curious sport, which soon gained followers among the local youth, and as they became familiar with its rules, some of them asked Mackay to participate, which he happily accepted, as he did not conceive of his recreational club as something exclusive to the British colony.[5] Ildefonso Martínez,José García Almansa, Alfonso Le Bourg, and some others, thus became the first Spaniards to play football.[5]
After a few years of consolidating these sports practices, Mackay and Adam decided to take a further step, so on 18 December 1889, they were among the seven men who foundedHuelva Recreation Club, thus becoming the first-ever football club in Spain, although it was originally founded as a sports club that provided physical recreation for the Rio Tintomineworkers to improve their health.[2][5][6] The remaining five founding members wereEdward Palin,Alfred Gough,Gavin Speirs, and the only two Spaniards:Pedro Nolasco de Soto andJosé Muñoz Pérez, both of whom had studied in Britain and thus had a great knowledge of the English language, with Nolasco having previous experience as a director of a sailing club, while Muñoz had a position within the local press.[7] Even though Mackay was the fundamental head behind the club's creation, it was Adam who was elected as the club's first-ever president since he was the eldest of the group and owner of the land where the games were played.[5][6][7] This position was then ratified as such at the meeting of 23 December 1889, in which four more members were added for a total of 11; the 27-year-old Speirs, an engineer, was named vice-president, and Palin was named secretary, while Mackay was appointed only as a member of the club's first board of directors.[7]
After Recreativo de Huelva,Sevilla FC is the next-oldest club in Spain, having been founded just a month later, on 25 January 1890, byIsaias White andEdward Farquharson Johnston, the British vice-consul ofSeville, and unlike the Huelva clubs, Sevilla was solely devoted to football, so many considered Spain's first football club.[2] Two months later, on 8 March 1890, these two clubs played thefirst official football match in Spain at theHipódromo de Tablada, which was refereed by Johnston, the president of Sevilla, who won the match 2–0; Huelva line-up the following players:William Alcock, Yates,George Wakelin,Guillermo Duclós, Coto, Kirk,Benito Daniel, Curtis, Gibbon,Geraldo Brady, and Smith.[9][10]
Following the success of the first match, the clubs decided to play a return fixture in Huelva just three weeks later, on 7 April 1890, in front of a crowd of 500, and even though Sevilla scored the opening goal viaGilbert Pollock, thus becoming the first-ever player to score an away goal on Spanish soil, Huelva managed to fight back to win 2–1, partly because they had been fortified by "some athletes from the British colony of Rio-Tinto".[11]
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TheRecreation Club demonstrated an organizational capacity that was out of the ordinary for a sports club of that time, playing many more matches against Sevilla and theClub de Río Tinto in the early 1890s, fielding the likes of Wakelin, Alcock,James Reeves, and captain Almansa, who scored a late winner against Sevilla in February 1892.[12][13] In 1892, Mackay created the club's first crest, the blue and white heart, because those were the colors of the Mackay clan crest, the flags of Scotland and Huelva, and even Lybster FC, his hometown club.[5]
In that same year, Mackay and Adam formed the club's subcommittee charged with planning and supervising the works of the so-calledCampo del Velódromo on the plot of land located on the Seville road opposite theHotel Colon, which was the first sports venue built in Spain for the practice of football,[5][7] and which was inaugurated on 20 August, just in time to host the sporting events that had been organized by Recreativo in commemoration of theIV Centenary of the Discovery of America.[7] After the departure of Edward Palin in 1891, Muñoz became the new secretary of the club, and as such, he played a key role in the organization of this event that took place between August and October 1892,[7] and whose program remains the oldest surviving original document from Recreativo, in which the club has specific and established rules for football, cricket, and tennis games, hence making them the oldest rules that had been created in Spain in relation to the practice of football.[14]
Charles Adam held the club's presidency from its foundation on 18 December 1889 until his resignation on 29 November 1896, being replaced by Mackay, who, in turn, held this position for nearly three decades until 1924, except for a brief period in 1903.[5][6] In March 1915 it was William Alexander Mackay himself who hand-delivered to the Minister of the Interior the letter requesting the KingAlfonso VIII to accept the Honorary Presidency of the Club, and since then Recreativo has been Royal.[5][15]
In 1891, most of the founders and promoters of Recreativo, including Adam, founded an organization called "Seamen's Institute", which was meant to provide shelter, entertainment, and company to the English sailors who anchored their ships at the port of Huelva for relatively long periods while they waited for the mineral and finished loading it onto the ships.[16] In 1903, after many years as secretary, Muñoz became the vice-president of Recreativo, and later that year, his proposal to create an annual football tournament between Recreativo and the British sailors of the Seamen's Institute was approved at the board meeting held on 9 December 1903.[7][17] Muñoz decided to follow the footsteps of theCopa del Rey, which had been inaugurated earlier that year with a cup donated by Alfonso XIII, and also ordered a cup made of silver inLondon, with the first match taking place on 2 January 1904, and being won by the British.[17] This was followed by another match on 30 April, which was postponed to 6 November to coincide with the inauguration of the new facilities at the Velodrome, but the British won again 4–2.[18] It was only two weeks later, on 20 November, that Recreativo finally won this cup, and despite some indications that the club had lifted theCopa de la Raza in 1893 and theCopa Heráldica in 1898, it can be reliably and based on strict documentary evidence that theCopa Seamen's Institute was the first time that a captain of Recreativo lifted a trophy; it was William Alcock, near the Anglican Chapel of the "Seamen's Institute".[18]
After declining invitations in previous years due to financial problems, Recreativo decided to participate in the1906 edition of the Copa del Rey, playing two matches at theHipódromo de la Castellana against Athletic Club and Madrid FC (currently known asAthletic Bilbao andMadrid FC), both ending in losses.[19] The Huelva squad that played in this tournament included the likes ofAntonio Tellechea,Tomás Estrada,Robert Geoghegham, andWilliam Waterston.[20]
On 1 January 1911, Recreativo achieved its third consecutive victory over the Seamen's (12–0), and in doing so, theCopa Muñoz became the definitive property of Huelva, and it still is the oldest trophy kept by Recreativo in its museum.[17][18] Muñoz held the club's vice-presidency for three years, until 1906, when he was replaced by the SpaniardManuel Pérez de Guzmán, whose six sons all played for the club between 1903 and 1920.[21] In the first half of the 1910s, two of the Pérez de Guzmán brothers (Manuel andJosé), along with Tomás Estrada, played a crucial role in helping the team win three non-officialAndalusian regional championships, which Recreativo itself organized, and theCopa Centenario de las Cortes de Cádiz in 1912, beatingEspañol de Cádiz 3–0 in the final.[22] During this period, Estrada was everything at Recreativo: player,captain,referee, andmanager, and also correspondent in Huelva for the weeklyMadrid Sport.[23]
Huelva also became the first Spanish side to defeat aPortuguese team, winning againstSporting Clube de Portugal. In 1940, it first reachedSegunda División, only lasting however one year and not returning until 1957. Since 1965, the team also began hosting theTrofeo Colombino.
In1977–78, led by, amongst others, formerReal Madrid youth graduateHipólito Rincón, Recreativo first gained promotion to thetop flight. After just one season, it returned to level two, staying there until 1990, the year of aSegunda División B relegation.
In1999–2000, Recreativo were due to be relegated to the third division, but were redeemed whenAtlético Madrid descended into the second and thustheir reserves were ejected.[24] With anew stadium and the appointment ofLucas Alcaraz as manager, and the club returned to the top flight for the first time in 23 years on 19 May 2002 with a 2–1 home win over fellow AndalusiansXerez CD.[25] After thisone season at the top, the team was immediately relegated back. However, in the same campaign, itreached the final of theCopa del Rey for the first time, being defeated byMallorca 0–3 inElche.[25]
In2005–06, after beatingNumancia on 4 June 2006,Marcelino García Toral's Recreativo mathematically secured promotion with two matches left to be played. Ahead of thenew season, the club bought players including France youth international strikerFlorent Sinama Pongolle fromLiverpool,[26] and young wingerSanti Cazorla fromVillarreal CF, with a budget of only €15 million.[27] The club finished eighth in the table, at 54 points, a best-ever, and made headlines with a 3–0 win against Real Madrid at theSantiago Bernabéu Stadium.[27] The club's leading goalscorer was Sinama Pongolle with 12 goals to his name, while García Toral left at its conclusion forRacing de Santander.[28]
Recre narrowly avoided relegation the following season, and in2008–09, one win in its last 15 matches led to it coming in last place and returning toSegunda after three years. Overspending in aim of returning to the top flight led to debts.[25] At the end of the2014–15 season, the team fell into Segunda B for the first time in 18 years.[24] A year later, the club was nearing extinction due to financial problems.[29] In May 2021, due to restructuring of theSpanish football league system, the club was relegated two tiers to the fifth level for the first time in its history.[30] Journalist Damián Ortiz of theDiario de Huelva called the entire squad "bastards without honour" and "a black mark on the history of Recreativo de Huelva".[31] In April 2022,Recre achieved promoted back to fourth division. In June 2023,Recre achieved second consecutive promoted to third division after beatingCacereño inlast playoff.
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