Samuel James Morris

Samuel James Morris Campbell (3 February 1842 – 12 December 1909), commonly known as Jaime Morris, was an English businessman and engineer. He is best known for being one of the first pioneers of football in Catalonia, playing as a goalkeeper for some of the earliest Catalan clubs in existence, such as Barcelona Football Club, in the early 1890s, at the age of 50.

Early and personal life Morris was born on 3 February 1842 in the New North Street in Holborn, London, as the son of Samuel Morris (1814–1891) and Elizabeth Campbell (1813–1884).

In 1861, at the age of 19, Morris was sentenced to 6 months of hard labor for theft, and later that same year, he went to the Far East and participated in the defense of Shanghai and Kahding during the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). They played their first cricket matches in a field near the Hippodrome of Can Tunis, which were disputed between the club's members and on some occasions against British sailors who docked in the port of Barcelona, with the earliest example of this dating back to 28 August 1891.

Together with his son Samuel, he was one of the first pioneers of football in Catalonia, being part of the first known club to have played football in the city, the Barcelona Cricket Club, since they played cricket in the summer and then football in the winter (which was common at the time).

Barcelona Football Club Jaime appears in the oldest documented image of a football team in Spain. He can be seen in the third row with a beret, between fellow goalkeeper Wood and Richardson, both of whom had been from the Cricket Club. In 1892, the Morris met James Reeves, who approached the cricket club's members to propose to them the idea of creating a well-organized football club, and the Morris were among the first to join him, as they were also in love with the game. The Morris were crucial in helping Reeves find enough people to assemble two teams, which included French, English, and Spanish, thus playing a vital role in the formation of the Barcelona Football Club in late 1892, and together with Reeves, they were crucial in its success.

This entity held the first known football match in the city, which was held on the fields near the Hippodrome of Can Tunis on 25 December 1892, in Casa Antúnez. It remains unclear if they actually played in this match or not, but they surely played on 12 March 1893, in the historic match between a blue team and a red team, and interestingly, father and son were on opposite teams, with Samuel playing for the Blues as a midfielder while Jaime represented the reds as a goalkeeper at the age of 51, but despite his advanced age, he managed to keep his son at bay in a 1–2 loss, with both of the goals that he conceded coming from non-Britons, Figueras and Jorge Barrié. Together with his youngest son, Miguel, the three of them appeared in what is regarded to be the oldest photograph of a football team in Spain, which depicts these two sides before the match on 12 March.

His son Samuel went on to follow in his footsteps by becoming the club's goalkeeper, a position he held until the end of his career. All three of his sons went on to play for FC Barcelona, thus becoming the first-ever Filipinos to play for Hispania AC and FC Barcelona, ahead of the likes of Manuel Amechazurra and Paulino Alcántara. According to his son Miguel, he was one of the mainstays of Hispania in 1900.

In an interview that his youngest son Miguel gave on 7 December 1948, he stated that "fills me with satisfaction, is to see how from those careers my father pursued after the ball at Casa Antúnez has led to what football is and means today in Barcelona and Spain".

Later life His fourth wife, with whom he married in London in 1896, was Helen Catherine Gillespie (1856–1928), who was born in London, but was remembered in the family as "a Scottish woman", and she is most likely a relative to James Gillespie, who four years later, in 1900, became in the first Scottish footballer to play for FC Barcelona, albeit only in three friendly matches.

Morris was a Freemason and this most likely led him to a close friendship with other key families in the birth of FC Barcelona such as the Gaisserts (Émile Gaissert, uncle of Joan Gamper and father of Emilio Gaissert) or the Saint Nobles (George Saint Noble, known as "brother electricity", and the footballers George and Royston Saint Noble, relatives of the Maragalls).

In 1905, Morris appeared at the auction for the concession of the construction of the Gran Vía in Madrid, as a representative of the company Hughes & Sterling of Liverpool and London, associated with the Sociedad Miró Trepat y Cia of Barcelona, a Catalan family closely linked to Spanish football, especially through José María Miró, a president of Español and Sevilla FC).

Death Morris died in London on 12 December 1909, at the age of 64.