This is the history of Real Betis Balompié, a Spanish professional football club based in the city of Seville, founded on 12 September 1907, which has won a Campeonato de Liga de Primera División and three Copas del Rey as its main titles and which throughout its history has played in the first, second and third divisions of Spanish football. It is the Andalusian team that has achieved the most points and goals in a league season in the first division (1996–97), as well as the one that has achieved the most points in a season (1934–35).
1907–1929: Early years The current Real Betis Balompié is the result of the merger produced in 1914, of two existing teams in the city, Sevilla Balompié, founded in 1907, and Betis Foot-ball Club, founded in 1909.
Sevilla Balompié
In 1907, a group of students from the Polytechnic School got together to organize a new football club in Seville. Among them were many groups of brothers, such as the Hermosa, Wesolowski, Castillo, Cáscales, and Gutiérrez, dressed in white and blue (representing the infantry). Its first president was Alfonso del Castillo Ochoa, and its first captain – who acted as coach – in 1914, was Manuel Ramos Asencio.
The rules of the "Sevilla Balompié" club, which consisted of fifteen articles, were established in the eighth article: "All foreigners who wish to play in this club may do so as passers-by". The fifteenth article added that the monthly membership fee was one peseta and the entrance fee was three pesetas and fifty cents. The board of directors of the club was formed by Alfonso del Castillo Ochoa (president), Roberto Vicente (vice president), Juan del Castillo Ochoa (treasurer), Vicente Peris (secretary), Salvador Morales (vice secretary), José Sequeiro, Edmundo Wesolowski, Jacinto Wesolowski, Gabriel Vadillo, and Antonio Gutiérrez (voting members).
Its headquarters were located in Calle Alfonso XII (1908–1909), c/Federico de Castro (1910–1911) and c/Jerónimo Hernández (1912–1914). The name chosen by the group of youngsters was "Sevilla Balompié" (España Balompié during the first months), to avoid the English word "football", which would become their trademark. The club was registered with the Civil Government on 1 February 1909. The "Balompié", as the team was known until the late 1920s, became the first winners of the Seville Cup in 1910, a status they retained until 1913. It also participated in the first edition of the Andalusian Cup in early 1910.
Betis Foot-ball Club
In 1909, the Betis Foot-ball Club was founded as a result of a split in the Sevilla Foot-ball Club, carried out by a group of members. Among its promoters were Rodríguez de la Borbolla, Diego Otero, Alberto Henke, Comesaña and Lissen Diego Otero. In 1914, through the efforts of its then president, Rodríguez de la Borbolla, King Alfonso XIII granted it the title of "Real".
Merger In 1914, Balompié was again proclaimed champion of Seville and changed its name from “Sevilla Balompié” to “Real Betis Balompié”, after merging with Betis Foot-ball Club.
On 6 December 1914, the board of directors of Sevilla Balompié and, two days later, of Betis Football Club, approved the merger of the two clubs. This was promoted by Papá Jones, an Englishman with a passion for football. In August 1915, the Civil Governor of Seville, Severo Núñez, approved the statutes and the change of name of the new club, ordering that the name of "Sevilla" Balompié be changed to "Real Betis" Balompié (entry no. 283, page 36 of the Government Book of the Civil Registry). In this way, the legal authority granted to this merger the treatment of a merger by absorption, preserving for all purposes the legal continuity of the first company, which maintained its registration in the register no. 283 without dissolution. Beyond the legal aspect, on a purely practical level, Balompié contributed the players, the list of trophies, the fans, and the pitch, which from 1913 was El campo de las Tablas Verdes, in the Prado de San Sebastián, while Betis F. C. basically added the title of Real. Thus, the club was popularly known as "el Balompié" and its fans as "los balompedistas" until the 1930s. From then on, the term "Betis" and the nickname "béticos" entered the popular lexicon to refer to Real Betis Balompié and its supporters.
Consolidation of Real Betis
After being proclaimed champions of Seville again in 1915, Balompié began a decade of slow decline in which it almost disappeared, as it did not have the financial means or the right to retain players in the era of “brown amateurism”, or disguised professionalism. More than a dozen of its best players were taken away in a short period of time, despite which it almost won the Andalusian championship 3 times, as the only rival of Sevilla, with players who had left Balompié.
In 1924, with the help of some of its former founders who returned to the board, Balompié improved its performances, winning the Spencer Cup in 1926 and, after several runner-up finishes, the Andalusian Cup in 1928. With the creation of the Campeonato Nacional de Liga in 1929, Real Betis was already a club with a solid sporting, social and institutional base and began its journey in the Segunda División on 17 February 1929.
1930–1943: Golden Age
At the beginning of the 1930s, the terms "Betis" and "Béticos" replaced "Balompié" and "Balompedistas" in the vernacular. In the first five years, the club wrote some of the most brilliant episodes in its history: in less than ten months, Betis became the first team from the south to reach the final of the Spanish Cup and celebrated its 25th anniversary with the title of Second Division champions on 3 April 1932. Betis Balompié - without the "Real" in the Second Republic - became the first Andalusian club to be promoted to Spain's first division.
In the first division, the club assembled a solid team that won the league in 1934–35 under the leadership of Patrick O'Connell. This team consisted of Urquiaga, Areso, Aedo, Peral, Gómez, Larrinoa, Adolfo, Lecue, Unamuno, Timimi, Saro, Caballero, Rancel, Valera and Espinosa; six Basques, three from the Canary Islands, three from Seville, one from Almería, one from Jaén and one from Valladolid, who grew up in Sestao. The title was won on 28 April 1935, with a 5–0 victory over Racing Santander in Santander. It was a Fair Sunday and the celebration moved to the fairground, where the news was announced on the boards of the stands.
A year later, the team that had won the championship was dismantled: firstly, due to a bad economic situation that forced the club to sell three of its players and, above all, due to the Civil War, which left the club without players because they were mobilized to the front. Only Peral and Saro remained in those years as representatives of those who had lifted the Cup fifteen months earlier. On 16 July 1936, a few days before the outbreak of the Civil War, the club signed a ten-year lease with the Seville City Council for the Estadio de la Exposición.
The consequences of the Civil War were bad for Betis, who also made the mistake of returning to competition in the 1939–40 season, when they could have applied for the moratorium granted to other clubs whose stadiums were used for "war purposes". As a result, on 28 April 1940, the fifth anniversary of their title win, the Green and Whites were relegated to the second division. Two years later, they briefly returned to the first division.
The dark years: The "manquepierda" (1943–1955)
In 1943, the team was relegated to the second division. The situation got worse and in 1947 the team was relegated to the third division in the midst of a serious economic crisis (third tier in the league system at that time). They were relegated on 13 April 1947, at the same place where they had won the 1935 title: Santander, where they lost 4–1 to Racing Santander.
For seven years, Betis played in the third division. During those years, the expression "¡Viva er Beti manque pierda!" (Long live Beti, even if it loses!),The determiner "er" corresponds to a widespread but incorrect phonetic usage in areas of Andalusia. Similarly, "Beti" without the final "s" is part of the same characteristic phonetism of the south and other areas of Spain, where the final "s" is suppressed or aspirated due to a strong and characteristic accent. attributed to the journalist and cartoonist Martínez de León, who created it for his character Oselito, became a distinctive phrase for the club and its fans.
The poet and journalist Joaquín Romero Murube described those years as follows:Romero Murube, Joaquín. "Porqué soy bético", Especial ABC diciembre de 1958
The experience in the third division strengthened the club and gave it the distinction of being the only team to have won the first, second and third divisions. The club returned to the second division in 1954 under the presidency of Manuel Ruiz Rodríguez, who resigned in 1955 when he felt he could no longer contribute to the club's growth.
The comeback: Benito Villamarín (1955–1965)
In 1955, Benito Villamarín, a prosperous businessman from Ourense settled in Seville, was elected president. He took over the team in the second division after seven years in the third division. After a failed attempt at promotion in his first season, they reached the top flight in 1958 with Antonio Barrios as coach after fifteen years of hardship. Villamarín brought order to the institution and created new illusions among Betis fans. He witnessed the rise of Luis del Sol, one of the most important players in the club's history, and carried out important actions such as the purchase of the Heliópolis stadium in 1961, although he also had to make some unpopular decisions such as the sale of El Sol. The team settled well in the first division and finished third in the league in 1964.
After these positive years, in the next two years the club suffered the deaths of the first team coach, Andrés Aranda (1965), and a year later of Benito Villamarín, after ten years of presidency that expanded the club and also experienced the relegation to the Second Division. In the following years, the team experienced almost consecutive promotions and relegations, until being consolidated in the First Division in 1974.
Stability: Nuñez Naranjo and Ferenc Szusza After some years of instability, after the death of Benito Villamarín in 1969, José Núñez Naranjo became president, when, according to his statements, "the team was in the second division, had only four thousand members, and the numbers did not seem to improve, they could not improve in any way".
During his tenure, the team was promoted to the first division in 1971 and 1974. In 1971, Hungarian Ferenc Szusza, one of the club's longest-serving coaches, joined the club. With the club's technical secretary, José María de la Concha, he was able to build an excellent squad that included historic players such as Julio Cardeñosa, José Ramón Esnaola and the young Rafael Gordillo, one of the club's legends, who made his debut in 1977 and stayed with the club for nine seasons. The Benito Villamarín stadium was expanded with the construction of the north and south stands. He left his post in July 1979.
The first Copa del Rey and the 1980s (1977–1992)
On 25 June 1977, Betis won the Copa del Rey at the Vicente Calderón Stadium against Athletic Bilbao. The team led by Rafael Iriondo and composed of Esnaola, Bizcocho, Biosca, Sabaté, Cobo, López, Alabanda, Cardeñosa, García Soriano, Megido, Benítez, Eulate and Del Pozo wrote a chapter in the history of Betis after a long shootout with 21 penalties. The following season, the team reached the quarterfinals of the European Cup Winners' Cup after defeating AC Milan, but were relegated to the second division.