Barcelona one of the best football clubs in the world has an usual link to a Merseyside school. As the decades of trophies and success have gone by many fans have wondered where their famous red and blue kit originated.
The truth is that it is right here at a school in Crosby. Brothers Arthur and Ernest, who were heavily involved in the founding of Barcelona are said to have proposed wearing the same colours as their school Merchant Taylors Rugby side in an early meeting of the club in 1899.
It was Frederick Witty, son of Frederick Arthur who realised no one was talking about the origin of the club’s colours that he decided to write to Liverpool to ask them if the blue and red were colours of the school. The answer was very clear – the maroon and blue was the strip of the schools rugby team in the nineteenth century, in which the two brothers had played for.
Barcelona’s website reads: “In the meeting in which the club’s colours were decided, the Witty Brothers must have proposed the colours of the school team, and Gamper, who was the ‘alma matter’ of the club, must have been warm to the idea as he had already worn a similar strip with Basel in 1896, even though he played with them for a short time.”
