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Real Sociedad

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Real Sociedad is a Spanish football club from the Basque city of San Sebastián/Donostia in Guipúzcoa/Gipuzkoa. Founded on September 17 1909, it currently plays in the Primera División.

Known in Basque as Erreala or the txuri-urdin ("white-blue" in Basque), from their colors: blue with white vertical stripes and white shorts. A blue quarter on white also appears in the flag of their home town. The home stadium is the Estadio Anoeta, which seats 32,000 spectators.

Contents

History

Football was introduced to Donostia in the early 1900s by students and workers returning from Britain. In 1904 they formed the San Sebastian Recreation Club and in 1905 they competed in the Copa del Rey. In May 1905 the San Sebastian Football Club was formed as a separate branch of the club. In 1909 they applied to enter the Copa del Rey but complications over registration permits saw them compete as Club Ciclista de San Sebastian. This team beat Club Español de Madrid 3-1 in the final. Out of the confusion the Sociedad de Futbol was formed on September 7th, 1909. In 1910 Spanish clubs played in two rival cup competitions and Sociedad de Futbol entered the Copa UECF as Vasconia de San Sebastian. In the same year Alfonso XIII, who used San Sebastian as his summer capital, gave the club his patronage. They subsequently became known as Real Sociedad de Fútbol. Real Sociedad were founder members of La Liga in 1928. The team came fourth with Francisco "Cuqui" Bienzobas finishing as top scorer. The teams name was changed to Donostia Club de Futbol in 1931, with the advent of the Second Spanish Republic, but changed back to Real Sociedad after the Spanish Civil War in 1939.

The team has generally fluctuated between the Primera and Segunda divisions, in one period (during the 1940s) managing to be relegated and promoted seven times. The best period of the team's history must be the early 1980s where they won the Primera two seasons running.

For many years, Real Sociedad followed the practice of their Basque rival Athletic Bilbao of signing only Basque players. They abandoned the policy in 1989 when they signed Irish international John Aldridge from Liverpool. The team that finished a surprising second in La Liga in 2002-03 dramatically illustrated this change. Key contributors to that side included a Serb (Darko Kovacevic), a Turk (Nihat Kahveci), a Russian (Valeri Karpin), and a Dutch goalkeeper (Sander Westerveld).

Trophies

Current squad 2006/07

The numbers are established according to the official website: [www.realsociedad.com] and [www.lfp.es]. The EU flags indicate players who, although foreign, are still members of the European Economic Community, thus the club is not restricted in player such foreigners.

As of February 1 2006

Squad changes during 2006/07 season

In: Out

Statistics 2005/06

La LigaPositionPtsPWDLFA
Real Sociedad164038117204865

Famous players

 

see also

Famous Coaches

see also

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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