Carlos Welton

Carlos Jorge Welton Niño was an English footballer who played as a midfielder for Sevilla FC in the early 1890s.

Early life

Carlos Welton was born in Seville as the son of Josefa Niño, a native of Triana, and George William Welton, an English chemist by profession who owned a small shop on Calle San Jacinto. He had a brother named Enrique.

Their father was also a member of the Círculo Mercantil de Sevilla ("Commercial Circle of Sevilla"), and together with Edward F. Johnston, a fellow British emigrant, they instilled sport as a recreational means in the Spanish members of Círculo, thus eventually creating the Club de Regatas de Sevilla in 1875, a sailing club whose skiffs soon began crossing the Guadalquivir. This club had both Spanish and British members, but it was the latter group who was the driving force of the club, since some of them had to instruct the Spaniards in the handling of skiffs, with Welton remaining one of the club's most active members until 1883, when it disappeared.

Sporting career

Early years

During his youth, the Welton brothers practiced rowing and regattas with their friend and neighbor Isaias White, who had also been born in Seville to English father, so despite being Spanish by birth, they all received a typically English education, thus being familiarized with the practice of football, so much so that in the late 1880s, they decided to create a football team made up of Seville residents.

White worked at his father's foundry, Portilla y White, and as such, he knew some of the British employees of the Seville Water Works Company Limited, so White and the Welton brothers recruited some of them to their new football team. They began to play football at the Hipódromo de Tablada (horse racing track) around the autumn of 1889, since football was a winter sport at the time, but finding 22 individuals (plus the referee) proved to be an impossible task, given that the expatriates came to work and many of them had positions of responsibility. Furthermore, football was a sport practically unknown in the city, so the only sportsmen who knew its rules were of Anglo-Saxon nationality, and thus, unlike the sailing clubs, White's football club only had foreigners, which is why its legalization in Spain never came to fruition, and soon this society, which was never officially established, seems to disappear in that same year.

Sevilla FC

On 25 January 1890, the Welton brothers were among the Seville residents of British origin who founded Sevilla FC, which thus became the second-oldest football club in history, and the oldest one exclusively dedicated to football.