User:Grover cleveland/Clubs

Background
Many association football clubs were founded by English expatriates in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such clubs were sometimes given names containing English elements. This started a tradition, in some countries, of using English in club names. For example, many clubs in Portugal have names that include the English word "Sporting". Certain originally English words, such as "football", "sport", and "sporting", are found very widely in clubs throughout the world.

The dictatorships of Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain both banned English names in football clubs, and many clubs were temporarily renamed during these regimes.