Francisco Arias (soccer player)

Francisco Arias was a Spanish soccer player and coach in Mexico and the driving force behind the founding of Club España in Mexico City .

Sometime between 1906 and 1908, Arias began playing football in the student team at Colegio Williams , a school in the then legally independent suburb of Mexico City, Tacubaya , which was incorporated in 1928 . Together with his compatriot Ramón Lanza, Arias was the only Spaniard in a team otherwise dominated by Mexicans and sons of English immigrants. In 1910 the two Spaniards joined the newly founded soccer club México , whose domicile was not far from their college in the village of San Pedro de los Pinos . In 1912 they broke up with other Spaniards, who also played at Club México, from this club and founded their own club, Club España, mainly on the initiative of Arias.

Francisco Arias played as a defender in the football team he founded and was the first team captain of the new club. Both his former club México and the Club España he founded took part in the game operation of the Primera Fuerza at the beginning of the 1912/13 season. After México had won the championship in 1912/13, España won the title practically single-handedly in the following years: in the seasons 1913/14 and 1914/15 with Arias as a player, in the seasons 1915/16 and 1916/17 with Arias as Player- coach and in the seasons 1918/19 and 1919/20 (in the last case in the Liga Nacional ) with Arias as coach.

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• Juan Cid y Mulet: Libro de Oro del Fútbol Mexicano (Tomo I, 1960), p. 92ff