Amateur Era (Early 20th Century)
After the war, the sports rivalry that evolved between the foreigners and the Chalacos began to gain much attention from people elsewhere. As a result, the popularity of the sport eventually extended to Lima, and even though at first the sport was played without the formality of sports clubs, a few clubs were eventually created in order to continue its practice in the early 20th century. Among these early clubs of the amateur era were the English community's Lima Cricket Club founded in 1859 although it is unclear when they first played football, their oldest recorded match having been played on August 7, 1892. They were followed by the Peruvian Ciclista Lima Association (Lima, 1896), and Atlético Chalaco (Callao, 1899).
In the 1900s, due to the construction of the Panama Canal, the port of Callao was no longer flooded with the quantity of foreign sailors and travelers that had at one point made the port a point of much cultural diffusion. Nonetheless, by this moment more Peruvian cities had developed their own football clubs and leagues, the most important being those of Lima, Cusco, and Arequipa. Some of the most important new clubs founded at this time were Alianza Lima (Lima, 1901), Cienciano (Cusco, 1901), FBC Melgar (Arequipa, 1915), the Italian community's Circolo Sportivo Italiano (Lima, 1917), Atlético Grau (Piura, 1919), Alianza Atletico (Sullana, 1920), Universitario de Deportes (Lima, 1924), Sport Boys (Callao, 1927), and Coronel Bolognesi (Tacna, 1929). As such, the sport rapidly grew in Peru, but the most important amateur league (the Peruvian Football League) stayed in the capital province where a new football rivalry arose between the participating clubs of Lima and the clubs of Callao. Yet, the lack of a central organization often brought much conflict between the teams, and such a situation eventually escalated into a conflict that led to the creation of the Peruvian Football Federation in 1922 and a new Peruvian Football League tournament under the regulation of said organization in 1926.
Read more about this topic: Football In Peru
Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or era:
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“The era of long parades past an official podium filled with cold faces is gone. Celebrating is now a right, not a duty.”
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