A Burns Night supper and a newspaper report in Scotland.

Sevilla FC dates its start to 25 January 1890, Burns Night. English Wikipedia says a group of young British residents of Seville, mainly Scots, met that evening with young Spanish men and formed a football club. Football had reached the city through its British community, many of whom owned or managed manufacturing businesses in the Andalusian capital, and the new club took an English-style name, Sevilla Foot-ball Club.

The founding is recorded in a Scottish newspaper. Wikipedia says the founding account was printed in the Dundee Courier on 17 March 1890, describing how the members decided to play under Association rules, to include the word “football” in the name and to elect office-bearers. The Scottish Football Association set out the same story in a news item dated 7 June 2018. It said Edward Farquharson Johnston, from Elgin, was elected the club’s first president, Hugo MacColl, from Glasgow, its first captain, and Isaias White, from Seville, its first secretary, and that one of the first measures agreed was to adopt the Association rules and put the words “Football Club” in the club’s name.

The club played its opening match within weeks. The Scottish FA said that on 8 March 1890 Sevilla played Huelva Recreation Club. Wikipedia adds that Isaias White had sent the invitation by letter, and that the letter was printed in the Spanish newspaper La Provincia.

The Scottish link is now part of the club’s own storytelling. The Scottish FA reported in June 2018 that, to mark the club’s 128th anniversary, chairman José Castro Carmona sent Scottish football a framed copy of the Dundee Courier page describing the club’s founding and its first match, and that Scottish FA president Alan McRae thanked the club for the gift.

A second date sits alongside 1890. Wikipedia says the club’s articles of association were registered in 1905, and in 2005 the singer Javier Labandón, known as El Arrebato, wrote a centenary anthem to mark that registration. The club’s official anthem is older: Wikipedia dates it to 1983, with words by Ángel Luis Osquiguilea de Roncales and music by Manuel Osquiguilea de Roncales. In 1992 Sevilla became a sporting limited company under Spanish law, and Wikipedia says the president has since been chosen by shareholders rather than by members.

From a double circle to a heart-shaped shield.

The monogram came first. English Wikipedia says that from its foundation the team used a double-circled crest: the outer ring carried the club’s name and founding date, and the inner circle, on a white ground, carried the letters SFC interlaced in the way they still appear today. Wikipedia credits this first crest to Juan Lafita, a close associate of the club and the son of the Sevillian painter José Lafita y Blanco.

The present arrangement dates from 1922. Wikipedia says the second crest was designed that year by Pablo Rodríguez Blanco, a draftsman who worked for the city’s Water Company. He divided the shield into three parts that together form the outline of a heart. The upper part shows three Christian figures taken from the coat of arms of the city of Seville: Isidore of Seville, Ferdinand III of Castile and Leander of Seville. On one side sit the initials SFC, which Wikipedia says had been on the official shield from 1905 to 1922, so the older monogram was carried into the new design rather than dropped.

The rest of the shield is built from stripes and a ball. Wikipedia says a football of the period appears where the three parts meet, and the lower part carries red and white stripes. Wikipedia gives two explanations for those stripes. One is that the club wanted red and white as its official colours from the start. The other links the lower part to the flag King Ferdinand III of Castile carried when he took Seville in 1248.

The club also defines a flag in writing. Wikipedia says the flag is described in the club’s 1982 articles of association as a rectangle cut by a diagonal from the lower left corner to the upper right, with the upper triangle white and the lower triangle red.

The crest has also been carried into stone. Wikipedia says that for the centenary in 2005 an allegorical mosaic by Ben Yessef, showing the history of the city, was set above the stadium’s southern gate, with the club badge shown above it as if floating in the wind.

Design and documentation.

Football club identities are often built from a handful of recurring devices, and the clubs in this part of the round show several of them. The first is the monogram: interlocking initials that compress a long formal name into a mark small enough for a shirt, a scarf or a stadium gate. Monograms tend to survive redesigns because supporters read them as a signature rather than a picture, so designers usually redraw the letters, adjust their weight and spacing, and leave the arrangement alone.

The second device is the motto. Some crests carry a short phrase, sometimes in the home language and sometimes in Latin, set on a ribbon or band. A motto gives a club a line of copy that can move from the badge to banners, stands and advertising without a change of meaning.

The third is origin. A number of European clubs began as works teams or sports associations attached to a factory, a school or a parish, and the founding organisation’s name or initials can remain in the club name long after the link has loosened. Finally there is the stadium name, which may honour a former president, a place or a sponsor, and which becomes part of the brand on tickets, signage and broadcast graphics.

Kit makers, Expo ’92 and a stadium named for a president.

Kit makers have changed over the decades. English Wikipedia says Sevilla signed its first kit-manufacturer deal with the German firm Adidas before the 1980–81 season. The club first wore shirts with a sponsor’s logo in the 1986–87 season, and Wikipedia says that logo promoted Expo ’92, the world’s fair held in Seville in 1992. From 2022 to 2025 the kit was made by the British brand Castore, and Wikipedia says that in June 2025 Sevilla agreed a new long-term kit contract with Adidas.

The club moved around the city before settling in Nervión. Wikipedia says that in their first fifty years Sevilla played at several grounds, including la Trinidad, the Mercantile field, the La Victoria stadium and the Estadio de Nervión. Land for a new ground near the Nervión site was bought in 1937 and building began in 1954, after a design contest won by the architect Manuel Muñoz Monasterio, who had also worked on the Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid.

The stadium carries a president’s name. Wikipedia says the ground is named after Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán, who led the club as president, and that supporters chose the name for the planned new stadium in the 1950s. The Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán opened on 7 September 1958 with a friendly against Real Jaén, and its east and west stands were completed in 1974. It has hosted international fixtures, including a semi-final of the 1982 World Cup and the 1986 European Cup final. The stadium also houses the club’s media operations, which Wikipedia says include a radio station, SFC Radio, launched in 2004, and a television channel first broadcast in the 2005–06 season.

The city has a second top-flight club, Real Betis, and matches between the two are known as the Seville derby. Their rowing crews also meet each year in a boat race on the river, and Wikipedia notes that the rowers who wear Sevilla’s crest in that race are drawn from the city’s rowing clubs.

For a design guide, Sevilla FC shows how a monogram can survive a full crest redesign by being placed inside the new shield. Compare the royal crown on Real Madrid, the mattress stripes of Atlético Madrid and the league identity of LaLiga. For this guide we use Nervión red, crest ink and shirt white with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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