History
The club was named by ex-pupils of the English High School of Rosario in homage to its director and football coach, English immigrant Isaac Newell. Newell's Old Boys has an historic rivalry with Rosario Central, the other club from Rosario.
The team colors are black and red, taken from the flags of England and Germany (Isaac Newell being English and his wife German). The team is often referred to as leprosos (lepers) because they played in a charity match to raise funds for a leprosy clinic back in the 1920s.
Newell's Old Boys have won the Argentine Championship five times (Metropolitano 1974, 1987–88, 1990–91, Clausura 1992 and Apertura 2004) and were the runners-up of the Copa Libertadores de América twice (1988 and 1992). The 1990-91 championship was contested between the 1990 Apertura (Newell's) and 1991 Clausura (Boca Juniors) champions, which Newell's won in home-and-away matches. Even though the 1990 Clausura was not considered official by itself, it is considered by Newell's supporters to be their "sixth" championship.
Newell's also won a friendly mini-tournament called the Little World Cup in 1988, against River Plate, Milan, Juventus, Real Madrid and Manchester United, and is, together with Boca Juniors, San Lorenzo and Racing one of the few Argentine clubs that made a long and successful tour over Europe (in 1941), in which they defeated several important teams such as Valencia, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Real Madrid and the Spanish National "A" Team. These are the only major international achievements of the club until now (although several minor international summer tournaments were won). So as yet the club have not won an official international championship.
Newell's Old Boys is one of a very few teams to have had all their players represent the National team in a single game (another is Queen's Park of Scotland whose first team represented Scotland in the very first International match against England), when they represented Argentina in a Pre-Olympic Tournament with their undefeated Reserva Team. It classified third all over America, after Brazil and Uruguay (references).
The team has also contributed an important number of players to the Argentina national team, and exported many players to Europe's top leagues, mostly to Italy and Spain. Among its great players were Gabriel Batistuta, Abel Balbo, Jorge Valdano, Américo Gallego, Mario Zanabria, Gustavo Dezotti, Roberto Sensini, Walter Samuel, Mauricio Pochettino, René Pontoni, Gerardo Martino, Ángel Perucca and several more. It has recently produced players like Argentine internationals Gabriel Heinze, Maxi Rodríguez and Lionel Messi.
The club's president is Guillermo Lorente who was recently elected.
Read more about this topic: Newell's Old Boys
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