6 football clubs with cricketing origins

Cricket and football, on the face of it, don’t have much in common with each other apart from the fact that both are team sports, invented by Englishmen, which have 11 players featuring per side and are played with a round ball. However, you would be surprised to know that many of the iconic football teams of today had some sort of a cricketing connection at the time that they were founded.Here are six famous football teams with cricketing origins:

#1 AC Milan

AC Milan is a professional Italian football club based in Milan which currently plays in the Serie A. Apart from being the second most successful club in Italy, behind Juventus, with 18 Serie A titles to their name, they have also won 18 officially recognized UEFA and FIFA titles which is the second most in the world alongside Boca Juniors.

Going back to its history, it was founded as Milan Cricket and Foot-Ball Club on December 16, 1899, primarily by English expatriates Herbert Kilpin and Alfred Edwards, who were originally from the city of Nottingham in England. As a tribute to the club’s English founders, it has retained the English spelling of the city’s name till date as opposed to the Italian spelling Milano.

#2 Clube de Regatas do Flamengo

Flamengo, based in Rio de Janeiro, is undoubtedly one of the most successful football clubs in Brazil. Apart from having won a plethora of titles in its long history, it is, after all, also one of only five clubs, along with Santos, Sao Paolo, Internacional and Cruzeiro, to have never been relegated to Brazil’s second division.

It is also Brazil’s most popular team, with over 39 million supporters as of 2010, and was voted by FIFA as one of the most successful football clubs of the 20th century. Ironically, though, Flamengo was established on November 17, 1895, as a rowing club and also occasionally got involved in cricket.

Some of the other football clubs in Brazil who played a bit of cricket and, in fact, had cricket as a part of their names were the Rio Cricket and Athletic Association in Niteroi and the Payssandu Cricket Club.

#3 Genoa Cricket and Football Club

Genoa CFC is a professional football and cricket club based in Genoa, Italy. The club, which competes in the Serie A currently, might be known around the world for its exploits in football, but it was mainly competing in athletics and cricket to start off with. Interestingly, Italians were not allowed to play for the club at first because it was essentially an English sporting club plying its trade overseas.

Established in 1893, football at the club gained prominence in 1897 courtesy of James Richardson Spensley. Italians were allowed to join the club by then, and the club found a new ground, in the form of Ponte Carrega, to play football in. They lost their first friendly game against a combined team of Internazionale Torino and FBC Torinese 1-0, but they registered their first victory, winning by a margin of 2-0, not long after. They moved to their current stadium Stadio Luigi Ferraris, which has a capacity of 36,536, in 1911. One of the oldest professional clubs in Italy, it has won the Serie A nine times and has also won the Coppa Italia once.

#4 Lima Cricket and Football Club

Lima Cricket and Football Club is a Peruvian sports club based in the city of Lima. Having been founded by English immigrants in the 19th century, it is one of the oldest clubs not just in Peru but in entire Latin America.

Right from the start, the club played both cricket and football in addition to rugby union. Although rugby union is not played anymore, the two sports mentioned before continue to be played and thrive in the Peruvian capital. Cricket and football naturally remain the focus of the club, but other sports like basketball, tennis and field hockey have also been played in recent years, making it a truly multi-sport club.

#5 Sheffield United FC

Sheffield United FC is a professional football club based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England which plays its home games at Bramall Lane. It was actually formed by Sheffield United Cricket Club in March 1889 just six days after Bramall Lane had staged an FA Cup semi-final which had collected £600 in gate receipts.

As a result of the money collected, the cricket club thought that it would be a good idea to have regular football played at the ground. It, however, decided to be too good an idea as the football club eventually became bigger than the cricket club and pushed the latter out of the ground.

The Sheffield United Cricket Club played their last game at Bramall Lane in August 1973 before the South Stand was built on a part of the cricket ground, thereby enclosing the football ground on all four sides.

#6 Sheffield Wednesday FC

Sheffield Wednesday FC, just like their city neighbours and intense rivals Sheffield United, owe their formation to a group of cricketers. The club was formed on September 4, 1967, after members of the Wednesday Cricket Club decided at a meeting at the Adelphi Hotel that they wanted to play football in order to stay fit during the winter months.

The Wednesday Football Club – it became Sheffield Wednesday only in 1929 – played their first ever competitive match on February 1, 1868, in the Cromwell Cup, a four-team tournament for newly-formed teams. They, then, went on to win the tournament by beating the Garrick Club 1-0 in the final at Bramall Lane, and eventually, the football club put the cricket club on the back burner.