Being founded in 1910, Brazilian club Corinthians Paulista has one of the most interesting origin stories in football. At the time, football in Brazil was a sport for the elites only. All the biggest and best clubs were formed by and comprised of members of the upper eschelons of Rio and Sao Paulo society, such as Club Atletico Paulistano, Sao Paulo Athletic Club and Associacao Atletica das Palmeiras. The lower classes were excluded from such clubs and forced to make do with ramshackle kickabouts among themselves, that’s if they were lucky enough to be able to procure a ball. Corinthians Paulista bucked this trend when it was formed by five blue collar workers from the Sao Paulo Railway: painters Joaquim Ambrose and Anthony Pereira, shoemaker Rafael Perrone, driver Anselmo Correia and labourer Carlos Silva who all lived in the industrial district of Bom Retiro.

 

On August 31, 1910, the men watched a match featuring an incredible team from London called Corinthian FC. On their way home from the match, the five men discussed business ideas, partnerships and their dreams of grandeur. They swapped several ideas but it was just one that they all agreed upon: the foundation of a football club. They agreed to meet the next day to make it become reality, and turned in for the night. At 8:30pm the next evening (September 1, 1910), under the glow of an oil lamp on Rua Jose Paulino, the men reconvened along with other friends and neighbours. There, the club was founded, and Miguel Bataglia became its first president. However, they still needed to think up a name. The committee met at Bataglias house at 8:00pm on September 5 to discuss the matter. A few names were tossed about, full of Brazilian spirit: Carlos Gomes Football Club and Futebol Clube Santos Dumont after famous Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont among others, but there was only ever going to be one name for the team. They elected to pay homage to the side they had witnessed in action a few days earlier, the team wearing chocolate and pink shirts that had won all six games on their promotional tour of Brazil – Corinthian FC. And so it was that FC Corinthians Paulista was born.

 

Like the great British club, President Bataglia declared that Corinthians Paulista would be a team “of the people, by the people and for the people” in defiance of the elite football culture existing in Brazil at that time. To this day, over a hundred years later, the club is still known as the “Time do Povo” (Team of the People). Now to tackle the next small problem. The club didn’t own a ball. A fundraising drive was undertaken throughout the neighbourhood, and a huge pile of pennies was contributed by the clubs new members t purchase the ball. The clubs directors walked into a shop and emptied the jar of pennies on the counter top, asking to buy a ball. It still wasn’t quite enough, but with some haggling, the regulation football was secured. This purchase essentially ended the elitism in Sao Paulo football and initiated it’s accessibility to members of all social classes in Brazil.

 

Their first home ground was not actually a stadium, but a vacant lot owned by a firewood seller. It sat on a floodplain and the players themselves had to maintain the lawn and mark out the pitch.  Corinthians Paulista played their first match on September 10, 1910, in which they were defeated 1-0. Their first win was four days later, Luis Fabi scoring their first ever goal in a 2-0 victory. Starting as an amateur club, they soon qualified for the Liga Paulista and graduated to the Sao Paulo state championship shortly after. In 1913, just a year after joining the league, Corinthians Paulista became champions. They managed the feat again two years later. At the time, many fly-by-night teams were popping up in the city before promptly disappearing again. In the case of Corinthians Paulista, a banner was displayed at their first training session reading “This One Will Last.” Over a century later, from these humble beginnings, Corinthians Paulista is the most valuable club in the Americas, worth $578 million, and has 30 million fans around the world. 

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Star player: Casemiro do Amaral, dob 14 September 1892, pob Lisbon, Portugal

Born in Lisbon, do Amaral immigrated to Brazil as a youngster in 1911 and began his career as a goalkeeper with Rio-based club America before shifting again to Sao Paulo and joining Germaniain 1912. In 1915 he played for Mackenzie after a falling out with the Corinthians board, with whom he had two stints with Corinthians Paulista, the first from 1913 to 1914 (during which he became a Campeonato Paulista champion) and the second from 1918 to 1920. As a keeper, he helped the team win the two qualifying matches that earned them a spot in the Campeonato Paulista. He kept goal for Brazil 6 times, and was part of Brazil’s 1916 and 1917 Copa America squads.