Hugh MacColl

Hugh MacColl (30 June 1861 – 31 August 1915) was a Scottish marine engineer and footballer who was a founder and the first captain of Spanish club Sevilla FC, including in the first official football match in Spain.

Early life Hugh MacColl was born on 30 June 1861, in South Apsley Place street in the Gorbals district of Glasgow. In 1876, the 15-year-old MacColl became an apprentice engineer at Robert Napier & Sons on the Clyde. In Spain, MacColl was known as "Don Hugo", That same evening, after consuming some beers and becoming concerned about their physical health and lifestyle, MacColl and the others began discussing the proposal of forming an Athletics Association, but after much discussion, they instead founded Sevilla FC to organize football matches regularly in order to exercise and feel more at home.

In 1894, another Hugh McColl travelled to Santiago in Chile where he was a player and trainer of the city's first representative team, but this was a different man despite the similarity in name. This Hugh McColl travelled back and forth from the UK to Chile over the next decade and a half.

Following Jameson's death, MacColl turned to another old pal, his fellow Sevilla FC founding member Gilbert Reid Pollock, who was a businessman and engineering expert, and who came across from Manchester to become a partner in the firm, which was renamed MacColl & Pollock.

He was also a member of the Institution of Naval Architects, the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, and the North-East Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders. He was just 54 and had amassed a fortune of over £14,600. At first, it was not known where he had been buried, but his grave was finally found in 2015 by the Sevilla club historian Javier Terenti, who had already found the gravestones of Edward F. Johnston in Elgin and Pollock on the Isle of Man.

Legacy In 2007, Sevilla FC won their second UEFA Cup in Glasgow after defeating RCD Espanyol on penalties in the final. Javier Terenti later said that this was "sort of tribute to our club's first captain".