The first time Barcelona came to the capital to play Madrid, in the semi-final of the Copa de la Coronación which marked the 16th birthday and ascension to the throne of Alfonso XIII in 1902, there were three Englishmen in the team. Arthur Witty, John Parsons and Henry Morris didn’t score that May afternoon at the Hippodrome, where the teams had tetanus jabs before playing and, according to one Catalan news sheet, they had been distressed at an ungentlemanly and unexpectedly partisan crowd applauding whenever they fell over and going silent when they scored, but they did win 3-1.
Barcelona, after all, had what one paper called “a significant advantage when it came to physical condition and experience”. Born in Catalonia, Witty and Parsons had been founder members of the club three years earlier; Morris, actually Enrique, was born in Manilla to an English father and Spanish mother, had played for a couple of clubs in the city where he had arrived with his family aged 10 and was essentially a ringer. And they had two Swiss players and a German as well. Founded by two Catalan brothers two months earlier, Madrid were not yet Real and hadn’t been playing long. Most of them hadn’t, at least.
