The Gimnostic Tarragona, from the Catalan town about a hundred kilometers off the coast of Barcelona, is the rival of the first pre-season friendly of the 2020/21 season (Saturday at 19:00 CEST, LIVE BY BARA TV). 120 years ago, to the historical instance of 1901 when FC Barcelona left the city for the first time . . . to play against Tarragona.
The 1901 Macaya Cup was the first football festival in Spain, featuring FC Barcelona and 3 other groups in the city, as well as, surprisingly, a club called Tarragona Football Unionistas Aficionados.
One wonders whether this makes Nostic the oldest football club in Spain. The Gymnastics Club from which it takes its call has existed since 1886, but it is not known that the club played football until 1914. It is not known where the 1901 footballers were formed. history, however, it is difficult that there is no connection.
The Tarragona team has nothing mysterious, in fact, despite their enthusiasm for getting into the new sport, none of them had ever noticed that he was really playing and started going to Barcelona to watch the matches and be informed of how it worked.
FC Barcelona was due to play in Tarragona on 17 February. All the other games were cancelled because everyone wanted to be at the Casanovas Hotel to see the intriguing new team in action. Unfortunately, Tarragona sent a telegram saying they were unhealthy and the game postponed until March 3.
Despite sending horse-drawn carriages to receive them at the station, a full orchestra waiting for them to receive them in the box and a post-match dinner at a stall at the hotel, Tarragona did not reappear. .
On a soaked morning on 17 March, FC Barcelona players took the exercise south for the back match in Tarragona. The game was in terrible delay. The experienced Barca team does not live up to the young novices. The 18-0 win is more of a shame than a win and will remain Barca’s biggest victory until he beat Dutch regional team Smilde 20-1 in a friendly in 1992.
Barca’s president, Hans Gamper, scored nine goals in that match, but in the end Tarragona had just given up and did not bear the humiliation well. More than a glorious opportunity to spread the game in the Catalan provinces, the total issue was a diplomatic disaster.
In the local newspaper La Opinión, the president of Tarragona, William Taron, stated that “this club has never intended to pretend that we can beat foreigners in football, who play football since they are young and tired of fighting have come here with so many pompous titles. As a football champion, as does a player. This last piece was an excavation in Gamper, which as Taron was from Switzerland.
He described FC Barcelona’s project to score as many goals as imaginable as “unsportsmanlike” and in comparison this matched that of Barca’s rivals Hispania a few weeks earlier. After Hispania scored five goals, this game was abandoned and the groups were simply combined to play a friendly.
Barca published his defense in his own magazine Los Deportes a few days later. They were bitter about Tarragona’s repeated lack of attendance at Barcelona’s matches despite all the efforts the club has invested to make it a wonderful opportunity, and were also not satisfied with the “glacial welcome it received upon its arrival in southern Catalonia.
Unlike Hispania, they had no visitors to the city and had to be located on their own to the countryside, this can mean only one thing: Hispania, with which Barca had a rivalry as fierce as any who came here afterwards, had done it all. may only to put Tarragona “on your side”.
In fact, Barca would have enjoyed boxing a weaker team, but the festival’s rules prohibited it. Instead, they had played a “childish” game without roughness and had intentionally tried to score goals when they knew they could. won the game 18-0.
This Tarraconian team played only one more game before disappearing from the records without scoring a bachelorette goal, but fortunately football would thrive in the city. In 1948, Gimnostic finished seventh in La Liga and played in the first department in 2007.
They’re back on Saturday. Because of Covid-19, cases would possibly be even stranger than in 1901, but in fact we might not see 18 goals. Let’s not expect anyway, the worry of reviving the ghosts of the past!