A new sport from England called football started to take a grip of our country. Its quick uptake meant that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the first organisations were created for its practice. One of them was the Madrid Football Club, a predecessor of Real Madrid. Julián Palacios was its first figurehead, but it was Juan Padrós who formally constituted the institution (1902). Interest grew at such a rate that Madrid proposed a tournament in homage to king Alfonso XIII. The initiative became the Copa de España.
The figure of Julián Palacios was ever-present in the club's early years. It was he who, in 1900, called a general meeting to decide which players would form Madrid's first team. The Padrós brothers took the reins shortly afterwards. Football was starting to generate a lot of attention and the number of members was growing in leaps and bounds. Its constitution as a company came on the 6th of March 1902, with a board of directors presided by Juan Padrós.
Those visionary directors made a proposal to the mayor of Madrid, Alberto Aguilera; the constitution of the first football tournament. The first competition was established in honour of king Alfonso XIII. Five companies registered for the tournament, which was held in the Hipódromo. It was the beginnings of the Copa de España and of what would become Madrid's hallmark, victory. The Whites won four titles from the first six editions.
A piece of land adjacent to the bullring in Madrid was made into a pitch for the new company's first matches. The Padrós' backroom became the scene of endless football discussions. One man who always had something to say was Arthur Johnson, an English national based in Spain. With the aid of his scrawlings, Mr Johnson demonstrated what he considered to be the ‘keys to playing football correctly'. Almost by accident, the Englishman had become the first coach in the history of Madrid.
Such were the dimensions football was taking on that Carlos Padrós had taken on a new challenge, to organise an international game. Madrid covered all the costs of bringing Gallia Sport from Paris to the capital. The champions of France and Spain head to head. Ninety minutes later in the Hipódromo, the match finished in a one-all draw and the teams set a date for a rematch in the neighbouring country.
At the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, significant problems arose with the Campeonato de España and some companies had begun to bicker. This led to the creation of the Federación Española de Fútbol (1909), whose beginnings were complicated, despite the unanimity of the constituent assembly at the time.
