A port wine merchant, a royal match and a revival.

FC Porto was founded on 28 September 1893 as Foot-Ball Club do Porto. English Wikipedia says its founder, António Nicolau de Almeida, was a local port wine merchant and keen sportsman who had become fascinated with football on trips to England. The new club played other Portuguese sides, including a match against Lisbon’s Foot-Ball Club Lisbonense on 2 March 1894, held under the patronage of King Carlos I and Queen Amélie, who travelled to Porto to watch and to present a trophy.

The first version of the club did not last. Wikipedia says Almeida’s involvement faded under family pressure, and by the turn of the century the club had become inactive. It was revived on 2 August 1906 by José Monteiro da Costa, who had returned to Porto after studying in England and wanted to bring football back to the city outside its British circles. He became president, and the club added gymnastics, weightlifting, wrestling, athletics and swimming alongside football. Shortly afterwards it rented its first ground and hired a French coach, Adolphe Cassaigne.

Monteiro da Costa also shaped the club’s look. It was under his initiative, Wikipedia says, that the club’s first statutes of 1909 fixed the colours and the uniform, and it was on land he rented with his father’s help, a horticulturalist, that the club laid out its first ground.

The club is still run by an elected president. Wikipedia says that on 27 April 2024 André Villas-Boas, who had coached Porto in the 2010–11 season, was elected president of Futebol Clube do Porto, succeeding Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa. The Portuguese sports paper Record reported the result on 28 April 2024, describing Villas-Boas as the club’s new president after he defeated Pinto da Costa in the vote. Wikipedia says the new president moved quickly on several fronts, appointing a new head coach, introducing a women’s football team to represent the club and promoting players from the B team and under-19 side.

From a blue ball to the arms of the city.

The club’s first crest, Wikipedia says, was created in 1910: an old blue football with white seams, carrying the initials of the club name in white.

The present design dates from 26 October 1922. On that day, according to Wikipedia, the club approved a proposal by Augusto Baptista Ferreira, known by the nickname “Simplício”, who was both a graphic artist and one of the club’s players. Rather than replace the ball, his design placed the coat of arms of the city of Porto on top of it, pushing the white letters down.

The city arms brought a great deal of detail with them. Wikipedia describes the coat of arms of the time as a quartered shield: the national arms in the first and fourth quarters, and in the second and third an image of Our Lady holding the infant Jesus, flanked by two towers, under a banner with the Latin words “Civitas Virginis”. The shield was surrounded by the collar of the Order of the Tower and Sword and topped by a crown supporting a green dragon holding a red banner with the word “Invicta”, meaning “undefeated”.

That dragon became the club’s emblem animal. Wikipedia says Porto are nicknamed Dragões, “Dragons”, for the mythical creature on top of the crest, and also Azuis e brancos, “the blue and whites”, for the shirt colours. Supporters are called portistas. When the club built a new stadium in the 2000s, the dragon gave it its name as well.

The colours were argued over before they were settled. Wikipedia says the club’s first official team, in 1906, wore an assortment of kits, including white shirts with red collars or blue vertical stripes, and even red shirts. The question was settled in 1909, when the first statutes, drafted on Monteiro da Costa’s initiative, required players to wear “a shirt with blue vertical stripes, black shorts, and personal footwear” at every training session and match. Some members wanted the city’s colours, green and white. Monteiro da Costa argued that the colours should be those of the country’s flag rather than the city’s, so that the club would defend the name of Portugal as well as that of Porto in matches against foreign sides.

Design and documentation.

Football club identities tend to be built from a small set of recurring parts, and each part carries its own design job. A motto, often written in Latin or in the club’s home language, is usually set on a ribbon or band around the crest, where it has to stay legible at the size of a phone screen as well as on a stadium façade.

Animal emblems are another common device. A bird, a big cat or a mythical creature gives a club a mascot, a nickname and a shape that can be drawn as a full heraldic figure, a flat silhouette or a costumed character on matchdays. The same animal may appear in several drawings at once, each tuned to a different medium.

Stadium names work as a second brand. Some grounds carry a historic place name, some honour a person and some are sold to a sponsor for a fixed term, which changes the signage, the wordmark and the way broadcasters refer to the venue. Kit sponsors add a third layer: a shirt front shared with a partner’s logo means the club’s colours and crest have to hold their own beside another company’s mark, season after season.

Stripes, kit makers and four grounds.

The striped shirt has stayed, while the companies that make it have changed. Wikipedia says Adidas began supplying the club’s kits in 1975. It lists the Italian brand Kappa in the late 1990s, Nike from 2000 to 2014, Warrior for 2014–15 and New Balance from 2015. Shirt sponsorship began in 1983 with the Portuguese company Revigrés, which stayed on the shirt front for two decades through successive renewals before Portugal Telecom took over. Later partners on the front included TMN, MEO and Altice, and Wikipedia lists the betting brand Betano from 2022.

Each move of ground has been part of the club’s story. Wikipedia says the first ground, the Campo da Rainha (Queen’s Field), opened in 1906 on land near Monteiro da Costa’s home that belonged to the city’s horticultural society. The club moved in 1913 to the Campo da Constituição, named after the nearby Constituição street, and later approved a plan for a larger stadium. The Estádio do Futebol Clube do Porto, better known as the Estádio das Antas after its neighbourhood, was designed by the Portuguese architects Oldemiro Carneiro and Aires de Sá and inaugurated on 28 May 1952 in the presence of the President of the Republic.

The current ground carries the crest in its name. Wikipedia says that after Portugal was awarded UEFA Euro 2004, the club built an entirely new stadium a few hundred metres from the old one, designed by the Portuguese architect Manuel Salgado. President Pinto da Costa named it the Estádio do Dragão, the Dragon Stadium, after the creature on top of the club’s crest. It was officially inaugurated on 16 November 2003 with a match against Barcelona, and in June 2004 it hosted the opening ceremony and opening match of the tournament.

For a design guide, FC Porto shows how a club can keep its earliest badge inside a later one: the 1910 ball still sits beneath the city arms that Augusto Baptista Ferreira added in 1922, and the dragon on top went on to name the stadium. Compare it with Nike, a former kit supplier, and Benfica, another Portuguese club with a heraldic animal on its crest. For this guide we use Dragão blue, deep navy and stripe white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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