114 years of the presentation of foot-ball in Málaga
On Sunday 3rd April 1904, the first football match was held in the city of Málaga.
Sociedad Málaga Foot-Ball Club made its presentation at the Paseo del Parque, called ‘Relleno del Parque’, which had been gaining ground since it was previously covered by the sea. It was the chosen location for this match, which kicked off at 5pm. Some 3.000 people watched the game on chairs brought expressly from the Alameda Principal.
The team, chaired by Antonio Sánchez and Vives, and who had been training for some time at La Malagueta bullring, presented two squads. One wore a white jersey, the other wore stripes, both with black shorts. Leonardo Campuzano and Antonio López (alma mater of the team) were the captains of both squads, made up of the following players:
Team A: Ricardo Gross; Manuel Campuzano, Joseph Bernard; José Bresca, Antonio Sánchez, Emilio Andersen; Leonardo Campuzano, José Bueno, Salvador Arias, Federico Cañas and Franki Rodríguez.
Team B: Eduardo Guille; Tico García de Toledo, Eugenio Rosillo; Félix Pérez Montaut, Ernesto Rittwagen, Ernesto Castro; Antonio López, Carlos Wissmann, A. Taylor, Francisco Rodríguez and Matías Arias.
The refereeing trio compromised of Francisco Caffarena, Enrique Herrera and Francisco Vives. The match ended in a draw (1-1), held on Sunday 11th April 1904, with Team A winning the tiebreaker by 2-0.
The match was chronicled by Guillermo Rittwagen, whose brother, Ernesto, was one of the 22 players of the match. Enrique ‘Tico’ García de Toledo Clemens, another of the players, would become manager of Baños del Carmen in later years, being responsible for the construction of a football pitch in the spa, the first footballing venue with a certain continuity in Málaga.