Joan Gamper

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Gamper was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, the eldest son of five children. His mother died when he was eight and the family moved to Zurich. He became a citizen of Zurich and apprenticed in the silk trade. As a youngster, he was a keen cyclist and runner. In 1893, aged 15, he paced Swiss champion Edouard Wicky in a 100 km race. He also played rugby union, tennis and golf. His first football club was Excelsior Zürich, which played in red and blue. He was a co-founder and first captain of FC Zürich. He also played guest games for Winterthur and Basel. In 1898, he held Swiss records over 800m and 1600m. He organized the first international athletics competition in Zurich, later known as Weltklasse Zürich. In 1897, work took him to Lyon, France, where he played rugby for Athletique Union. In Barcelona, he was called Kans and Kamper due to Catalan pronunciation difficulties, but is best known as Joan Gamper.

In Their Own Story

In 1908, Gamper became president of Barcelona for the first time, taking over as the club was on the verge of folding. Several of the club's better players had retired and had not been replaced, and the club had not won anything since the Campionat de Catalunya of 1905. Gamper raised funds from local businesses, and on 14 March 1909, Barcelona moved into the Camp de la Indústria, a stadium with an initial capacity of 1,500 spectators, later expanded to 6,000 in 1916. He launched a campaign to recruit more club members, and by 1922 the club had over 10,000, leading to a move to Les Corts with an initial capacity of 20,000. Gamper also recruited legendary player Paulino Alcántara and appointed Jack Greenwell as manager in 1917. Under Gamper's leadership, Barcelona won eleven Championat de Catalunya, six Copa del Rey, and four Pyrenees Cup. His final presidency ended in controversial circumstances on 14 June 1925, when Barcelona fans jeered the Spanish national anthem and applauded God Save the King, leading the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera to accuse Gamper of promoting Catalan nationalism.

Reader's Guide

In 1899, Gamper went to Barcelona to visit his uncle who was living there. He was on his way to Africa to help set up sugar trading companies but fell in love with the city and stayed. He became a fluent Catalan speaker and adopted the Catalan version of his name. He worked as an accountant for Crédit Lyonnais and the Sarrià Railway Company, and as a sports columnist for two Swiss newspapers. He joined the local Swiss Evangelical Church and played football with the Protestant community and with friends at the Velódromo de la Bonanova. He contacted Jaime Vila of the Tolosa gym to propose creating a football club, but Vila rejected him for wanting no foreigners. Gamper then aimed to create an open, democratic club. He and Walter Wild went to Gimnasio Solé, where Narciso Masferrer helped publish Gamper's advert on 22 October 1899. A meeting on 29 November 1899 founded Futbol Club Barcelona. The founders included Swiss, British, and Spanish enthusiasts. It is not known if Gamper chose the blaugrana colours; the official version credits brothers Arthur and Ernest Witty, who proposed the colours of their school rugby team.

Did You Know?

• Gamper scored 126 goals in 55 games for Barcelona between 1899 and 1903, a ratio of 2.35 goals per game.
• He scored 31 goals in the 1900–01 Copa Macaya, including two nine-goal hauls against Franco-Española and Club Tarragona, and an eight-goal haul in the return match with Franco.
• In the 1901–02 Copa Macaya, Gamper was the top scorer with 19 goals, just two more than teammate Udo Steinberg.
• On 1 February 1903, Gamper scored nine goals in a 13–0 win over X Sporting Club in the Copa Barcelona, becoming the first and only player to score three nine-goal hauls in his career at Barça.
• Gamper was a member of the Barcelona team that participated in the Copa de la Coronación in 1902, the predecessor of the Copa del Rey.