Club Atlético Peñarol

The history of Montevideo's Club Atlético Peñarol links two different historical eras related to emigration to Uruguay.

The story of one of the most famous football clubs in South America starts in the 1870s when people still knew nothing about football. This is where the foundations were laid for the future name of the football club: a lot of Italians emigrated to Uruguay at that time.

These Italian emigrants included Giovanni Battista Crosa, who was born in Pinerolo and arrived in Montevideo after spending some time in Mallorca, where he met his wife Francisca Pérez Bracaman.

Having failed to find employment in the city, he moved to what was then a suburban and rural area, about 10 kilometres from the city centre, and here he opened a general store, a “pulpería”, with an adjoining restaurant service, which soon became a meeting place for many immigrants, mostly Italians.

The emigrants of the time often talked about their hometowns, so much so that they combined them with their name: so Crosa soon became known as “Piñerol” (similar to the Piedmontese pronunciation) and this was later adapted to “Peñarol”. The combination of surname and place of origin was so strong that when his son Francisco was christened, he indicated “Crosa Peñarol” as his surname on the christening certificate.

The importance of Crosa and his business was such that the whole area was soon called Piñerol or Peñarol.

One hundred years later, at the end of the 19th century, there was also a strong British presence in Uruguay.

In this very area, now identified as Peñarol, the company “Central Uruguay Railway Ltd” built railway lines and a station.The company took part in the creation of a sports association founded on 28 September 1891 under the name “Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club” (“C.U.R.C.C.”) and adopted the yellow and black colours of the locomotive used by the company, The Rocket.

There were 118 initial founders: 72 British, 1 German and 45 Uruguayans. But just two months later, the team was called Peñarol by the people and the press, and its players included descendants of Italians such as Víttori and Mazzuco. The team soon became popular with the working class people, winning the hearts of the Italian community in Uruguay, and on the 13th of December, the football section changed its name to CURCC Peñarol and officially became Club Atlético Peñarol a few months later, in March 1914.

Peñarol was named “Best South American Club of the 20th Century” by the IFFHS (International Federation of Football History and Statistics) and, in August 2007, was invited by the Torino football team to play in the Centenary Tournament. During the tournament, the team visited Pinerolo, where it was received by the Mayor.

Story compiled in collaboration with Romina Deprati and Andrea Pedemonte.