The history of Argentinian football is a fascinating read, full of special events and moments as we take a look further on Huracan, a club that made it possible for Osvaldo Ardiles and Cesar Louis Menotti becoming World Cup hero’s.
Huracan are the team with the hot air balloon on their shirt, the special crest with a special history. Their patron Jorge Newbury was the man with the hot air balloon story.
Newbury flew his hot air balloons over South America, once in a travel passing Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil on his travel. This special trip in the air was done with a hot air balloon named “El Huracan”. The club was founded in 1901, and was first named Los Chiquitos de Pompeya, seven years later the founding of Huracan took place.
The club was at first a Buenos Aires district team, but with the help of Jorge Newbury establishing themselves as a club part of the Argentinian Football Federation. The progress came fast as the club climbed from the third tier entrance in 1909, into the top division in 1914.
Club Atletico Huracan, which is their full name, won their first league title in 1921. The last time they lifted the league trophy is as far back as 1973, then with Cesar Louis Menotti as manager, later known for his iconic World Cup winning triumph in 1978.
This club as so many others in this part of the World, do offer more than football and offer in total eleven different sports, as they are seen as an atletic club.
The club won their last major trophy in 2014, being winners of Copa Argentina. Huracan are at present 2nd in the top flight, on level points with River Plate. The top division is splitted in two leagues, and in total 28 teams competing.
Looking through the squad of Huracan, they only have three foreigners among their players. Argentinian top clubs are focusing on bringing forward their own talent and of course being a top supplier of footballers to the best teams in Spain and Italy.
Football in Argentina is a fantastic read, with passion and feeling for football you will not find easy elsewhere. The period of 1885 to 1930 is a bit special, as European emigrants came to the country and you had Germans, Spaniards and English settlements established.
Jorge Newbury, is in a way a symbol of the same, as his father, Ralph, was a dentist who emigrated from Long Island, New York, and settled in Argentina after the American Civil War, in which he fought on the Union side of the Battle of Gettysburg and was recognized for his courage.
Jorge was in the public eye between the 1890s and the first fifteen years of the 20th century, a very important time for Argentina which was characterised by an enormous immigration of Europeans which multiplied the country’s demographic importance by a factor of five. The population of Argentina, which represented 0.12% of the global population in 1869, would come to make up 0.57% of mankind in 1930. and the expansion of an economy of agricultural export which increased the GDP per capita from $334 in 1875 to $1,151 in 1913.
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