Anselmo López Sánchez

Anselmo Ramón López De Sánchez (25 January 1891 – 5 November 1919) was a Spanish footballer who played as a goalkeeper for Sporting de Gijón. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the amateur beginnings of Sporting de Gijón, having been the fundamental head behind the club's foundation in 1905, and then serving as its first president for over a decade, from 1905 until 1915.

Early life Anselmo López De Sánchez was born in Gijón on 25 January 1891, as the son of Crescencia Sánchez Cambert, a native of Villaviciosa, and Anselmo López del Valle, a native of Cenero who died before his birth. On several occasions, López signed with the initials ALD, having compressed his second surname from "De Sánchez" to "Desanch". (There is controversy over the foundation date of Sporting, with the club's own board of directors defending that it was founded in 1900 with Anselmo López at the head, in a statement in which it claimed to be the oldest team in the city.) In its beginnings, Sporting competed against Adaro's Gijón Sport, and also against the students of the Colegio de la Inmaculada, a Jesuit school on the Cuesta de Ceares who had been playing football in its courtyard since 1890. Under his leadership, the club played on several fields, starting with the sandbanks of the San Lorenzo beach until 1910, when it moved to La Matona, where they stayed for only one year, because in 1911, Sporting moved to Mr. Piñole's field, where they played until the El Molinón was rented in 1915. In the following month, on 21 December, teams from Gijón and Oviedo played a tribute match in his honor, which was held at the El Molinón. After spending many years working on this initiative, the Asociación Anselmo López finally managed to install a bust of Anselmo López in the access tunnel to the changing rooms of the El Molinón, which was unveiled on 4 April 2017.