FC St.Gallen 1879
The oldest football club in continental Europe
FC St.Gallen 1879 is Switzerland’s oldest football club. It has deep roots in Eastern Switzerland and represents the entire region. The club is backed by Switzerland’s most devoted football family. Emotions run high at the team's games every week, as the players' exploits on the pitch captivate the crowd. Bitter disappointment is followed by sheer euphoria as, one moment, they make you despair, while, the next, they give you goose bumps. The FC St.Gallen 1879 women are also at the top of their league. The women’s team usually plays home matches at the revered Espenmoos stadium, which was where the men’s first team also played until the kybunpark opened in 2008. Since 2020, at least one home game per season has been played at the kybunpark. This is FC St.Gallen 1879.
Switzerland’s oldest surviving football club
The history of FCSG in football
FC St.Gallen was founded on 19 April 1879. The founding documents no longer exist, but the first articles of association show this date. Furthermore, that day’s edition of the St.Gallen Tagblatt newspaper contained an announcement of the founding of a football club in the Hörnli restaurant on Neugasse in St.Gallen. Records from the 1880s show that the football club was playing every day between 1 and 2 pm, and in the evenings until nightfall. They didn’t play according to football association rules, so they did some things a bit differently – for example, the goals were about half the usual size. They held tournaments twice a month. The Schönberg Institute was their first external opponent. Throughout the 1880s, several football clubs sprung up in and around the city of St.Gallen, but sooner or later they were all incorporated into FC St.Gallen. On 17 March 1902, Vereinigter FC St.Gallen played its first international match, against Alemannia Karlsruhe. The St.Gallen team won 26-nil. Vereinigter FC St.Gallen changed its name to FC St.Gallen on 22 June 1903. In the 1903/04 season, FC St.Gallen won its group for the first time and subsequently became Swiss football champions, also for the first time.
The women’s team at FC St.Gallen 1879 is highly regarded within the club and has gone from strength to strength in recent years. In 2017, the women’s teams of FC St.Gallen 1879 and FC Staad merged. In 2019, the FCSG women’s team was promoted to the top division and has stayed there ever since. The women of FC St.Gallen had their most successful season to date in 2022/23, reaching the cup final and advancing to the semi-final play-off of the championship.
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