“A jewel of incalculable value”: the story behind the first football photo that was published in El Comercio

Peruvian soccer has little good news but it never lacked hope.

A chronicle from the Historical Archive of El Comercio dated 1894 is proof of that faith. It is a friendly match between young Peruvians and English players played on the old Santa Sofía field, where Grau Avenue cuts through the city today. The extraordinary edition for the 150 years of the newspaper (1939-1989) says that this is the first chronicle about football published in the country of which there is a record. It is, therefore, a gem. Some adjustments, six column photos and a headline designed to kidnap, and it could be published today:

“Little by little, the number of Foot Ball players is increasing in Lima and it is hoped that when this game becomes popular we will be able to compete and beat the English.”

She is the Peruvian hope, the youngest daughter of her faith.

National historians regarding the arrival of soccer in Peru agree on a noble date for the birth certificate: August 7, 1892. That day the first match was played in Peru. In “The diffusion of football in Lima”, a thesis by historian Gerardo Álvarez Escalona (published on the official website of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos), the author refers to three pieces of information to understand what was first a phenomenon and then a revolution:

Two years after that match, El Comercio sent a chronicler to witness the defeat against a foreign team and dedicated a corner of its pages – which we reproduce here – to him. We still hadn’t gotten used to losing so much.

THE FIRST PHOTO

It is already 1904. They call soccer football, the games are matches, and the balls could only be obtained if a foreign ship brought them on board from Buenos Aires or Valparaíso. Sport Alianza was three years old and the ‘U’, the University Football Federation, was not even a project. The classic was played between the intimates and Atlético Chalaco, the other senior team. That was the soccer scene in Peru in 1904. And it was Trade the first newspaper in the country that was really interested in the most influential sport in the world. Thus, on February 7 of that year, a two-column photo immortalized an event that is remembered today: soccer was also played in Peru. And we could see it in photos.

Historical postcard from 1904: wearing dark and white shirts, ten players await the fate of the ball. It is not a field with huge stands, on the contrary, it is the old field of the wooden stadium of Santa Beatriz. Behind, trees that no longer exist today. This is what the first football photo published by El Comercio in its history and recovered looks like. It was a match between the crew of the English cruiser HMS Amphion, anchored in Callao from Panama and a combination of Peruvians and English residents in Lima, an eleven made up of players from Unión Cricket and Lima Cricket, the most representative clubs of the time. Roberto Castro, director of Dechalaca, searched for the photo for years, until we found it in the archive. “It’s a gem,” he says, with that tone with which children find their favorite program on TV.

How was the match? The locals won, 2-0. But this time, statistics weigh less than history: “The view that we offer today to our readers was taken especially for El Comercio, at a time when the most interesting part of the football match between the sailors of the English warship Amphion and the eleven was taking place in Santa Beatriz last Thursday. Peruvian who was the winner, as we announced when giving an account last Friday of that beautiful sports festival.”, Legend says. The caption of a photo that, in itself, is also a photo.

THE EYES OF FOOTBALL

There is not a single sporting event in Peru and the world that has not been reported by El Comercio. But that is not a luxury: it was his obligation. First in the Sports section, then in the Deporte Total supplement (1986), where not only soccer players spoke. So did the Golden Girls of Seoul 88, the champions Sofía Mulánovich and Kina Malpartida or the most successful in the history of the Olympic Games, Michael Phelps.

Dean of national journalism, the photos he recovered for Mundialistas, the book of unpublished images that he published regarding the 2018 World Cup qualification in Russia, were his historic participation as a fan of a sport that – like nothing else in the country – raises awareness. He is a time machine and erases ideological and political borders. The portrait of its heroes – from ‘Manguera’ Villanueva to Lolo Fernández in Berlin 36, from Teófilo Cubillas to Roberto Chale in the wonderful 70s, from Paolo Guerrero to Edison Flores in the happiest months of 2000 – is the guarantee that, In Peru, men and women run after a ball with pride. As in the first chronicle of 1894, with hope. Not to flee; to be free.//