Isaias White

Isaías White Méndez (2 June 1869 – 16 June 1914) was an English / Spanish footballer who is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the amateur beginnings of Sevilla FC, being one of its founders in 1890, and then serving the club as its first secretary, from which he organized the first official football match in Spain, where he scored a goal to help Sevilla become the first team in Spanish football history to win an official match.

Early life Isaias White was born in Seville on 2 June 1869, as the fourth child and only son of Maria Méndez Montes and Isaiah White Lewis, and was baptized on 12 June of that year in the parish church of San Vicente in Seville. His father was an English engineer from Gloucestershire and co-owner of the Portilla, White, y Cía, which was "one of the most important mechanical engineering and metal construction companies in Spain in the second half of the 19th century".

In the 1891 General Census of the Population of Seville (padrón), a year after the founding of Sevilla FC, Isaias is listed as 21 years old and living with his parents and sisters in Calle Bailen 41, in the San Vicente neighbourhood of Seville. The house still exists, but has since been renumbered, making this the first home of Sevilla FC. In the padrón men between 21 and 40 are required to list their military service, and in this section, the word ‘Ingles’ (English) has been added. Despite being a Sevillano by birth, as his father was English and under the British Nationality Act 1772, children born abroad were considered British even if the father alone was British.

Sporting career Early years During his youth, White practiced rowing and regattas with his friends, the Welton brothers (Enrique and Carlos), who had also been born in Seville to English parents, so they all enjoyed dual nationality. In the late 1880s, he began working in his father's company, one of Spain's largest foundries, which was located on Arjona Street in Seville, where he had personal contact with a plurality of people from different places, including sailors and merchants from Great Britain, who were the ones to introduce him to the sport of football, since his father had left England in 1848, a time when football had not yet fully kicked-off in the country. After watching a few matches between the different crews of British ships, White decided to create a football team made up of Seville residents, and the first people that he recruited were the Welton brothers.

As part of his job at the foundry, White had sometimes worked with the British employees of the Seville Water Works Company Limited, also known as "the water of the English", which in 1883, had built the water extraction wells in Alcalá de Guadaira, a town that had two flour mills, both owned by the Portilla & White foundry, so he took advantage of this connection to meet and recruit some British members from this company for the new sports society. That same evening, after consuming some beers and becoming concerned about their physical health and lifestyle, they 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. Sevilla thus became the second-oldest football club in history, and the oldest one exclusively dedicated to football.

First official match in Spain Letter written on 25 February 1890 by the secretary of the Sevilla Football Club (Isaiah White) proposing to the secretary of the Huelva Recreation Club (Edward Palin) to play a friendly football match. Wasting no time, Sevilla FC began organizing several "kickabout" matches between the club's members in a close by racecourse, where White and the others would set up goalposts to play 70-minute five-a-side matches on Sundays, which at the time was a non-working day, although MacColl and the others were able to persuade their bosses to give them Saturday afternoons off. who that day played alongside captain MacColl, and together, they helped Sevilla to a historic 2–0 victory, thus becoming the first team in Spanish football history to win an official match.

The author of the second goal was a certain "Clown Yugles", nicknamed so for stepping onto the pitch in a nightdress "in the shape of a fantastically patterned suit of pyjama". Sevilla and Huelva kept facing each other in the early 1890s, home and away, in which White played alongside fellow Portilla White co-worker, Gilbert Pollock, who scored the first-ever away goal on Spanish soil, In the absence of teams to play against, Welton and White would play other sports, such as rowing, but the lack of opponents was such that Sevilla eventually faded away.