Well, this one's going to be on the universe of a football TL i'm planning on posting soon:
Name: Club Athletico Paulistano
City: São Paulo
Nickname: Alvirrubro Paulista
Founded: 29 December 1900
Venue: Estádio Jardim América
Capacity: 45,000
League: Campeonato Brasileiro - Série A
Club Athletico Paulistano, known simply as
Paulistano, is a Brazilian multisport club based in São Paulo. Founded on 29 December 1900, the club was a founding member of LPF (Liga Paulista de Foot-Ball) and took part on the first São Paulo city league in 1902, the first league championship in Brazil.
The team, although competitive, would only find little success during the LPF era of the league (1902-1912), and was mainly distinguished for being the owner of the Velódromo, the stadium used as the venue for all league matches. A dispute over the value of the rent that LPF paid Paulistano for the use of the stadium led to Paulistano, plus another two teams, leaving the league and forming their own league, the Associação Paulista de Esportes Atléticos (APEA) - the next four years would have two parallel city championships until LPF folded in 1916, and the amateur years at APEA would prove to be one of the team's most victorious, with the team winning four championships in a row between 1916 and 1919, a mark that would never be replicated afterwards, and the team establishing itself as one of the city's powerhouses, along with more recent arrivals Corinthians and Palestra Itália, with the three becoming collectively known as the "Trio de Ferro". A major contributor to this success was Arthur Friedenreich, in these days counted among the all-time greats of football, who became six times top-scorer of the São Paulo championship during his time with the club.
In March and April 1925 Paulistano became the first Brazilian side to tour continental Europe, a trip that to date forms a major part of the club's folklore. Paulistano, reinforced with Araken Patusca from Santos FC and three far less prominent players from Rio's Flamengo, won nine out of ten matches in France, Swabia and Portugal, encountering and defeating also the national teams of the three countries.
However, at this time, professionalism had become a increasingly controversial topic, with the Argentinian and Uruguayan leagues having recently legalized professionalism. Although under the regulations of the time, professionalism was forbidden, most teams paid their players covertly to remain competitive. So, when APEA voted on allowing professionalism in 1926, partly to keep itself from losing players to the newly-professionalized Plata teams, the motion passed without much difficulty (but not without opposition), But the disputes continued within the team itself. The club, after initial opposition, eventually decided to allow professionalism, which caused a split, with the staunch amateurs in the club leaving to form a new amateur team,
Clube Atlético São Paulo, which would go on to become one of the premier amateur teams in the country.
However, despite the split, the team would remain competitive, though financially strained, into the 30s, and would eventually hit a bad phase during the late 30s. The team began recovering again during the 40s, with the team signing names such as world champions Leônidas, Luisinho and Zezé Procópio and Argentinian Antonio Sastre, and the team would go on to win five city titles in the decade and its second Rio-São Paulo title.
In contrast, the 50s and 60s would be considerably less victorious decades, with the club first prioritizing financially the expansion of its Jardim América stadium, and finding it hard to compete with the Palestra and Corinthians's early 50's squads, and then after that, the rise of Pelé's Santos making it even harder to compete, with the team spending 13 years without a official title. Paulistano would also become one of the first participants of the Campeonato Brasileiro in 1959, and would remain as a consistent participant in the competition to this day.
The team would return to a certain kind of form during the 70s, although the team was certainly more competitive than in the previous decade, titles remained hard to come by, with the team funishing as runner-up in the national championship thrice (twice to Atlético Mineiro and once to Palestra Itália) during the decade. Despite the releative lack of titles, many of the club's idols, like Valdir Peres, Serginho Chulapa, Pedro Rocha, Dario Pereyra and Pablo Forlán, would play for the clube in that decade. The pattern continued during the 80s, with the team losing another final (to Grêmio) in 1981, until the team won its first national championship in 1986, with a team featuring Careca, Falcão, Silas, Oscar and Müller. The decade was capped with another national finals loss, this time to Vasco da Gama.
However, during the early 90s, the club would surpass even its 1910s and 1940s successes - although the decade begain with Paulistano, which had hired Telê Santana as a manager early in the year, losing in the national finals again (to Corinthians), the team would win its second national title the next year, against championship sensation Bragantino, and the club began a period of consistent achievement both nationally and internationally, with the team, deaturing Zetti, Müller, Palhinha, Toninho Cerezo and Raí, winning the Copa América and the Intercontinental Cup back-to back in 1992 and 1993, plus a Copa CONMEBOL in 1994.
Telê would eventually retire in 1996, and the rest of the decade and the beginning of the next would be marked by relatively lackluster performances, until the time returned to form in 2002, winning the national championship again. Paulistano would go on to win another Copa América-Intercontinental double in 2005, and the national championship another two times in 2006 and 2008. However, after that, the team hit another slump which arguably has been in to this day, only punctuated by a Copa CONMEBOL win in 2012.
Honours:
Intercontinental Cup: 1992, 1993, 2005
Copa América: 1992, 1993, 2005
Copa CONMEBOL: 1994, 2012
Torneio Rio-São Paulo: 1934, 1946
Campeonato Brasileiro winners: 1986, 1991, 2002, 2006, 2008
Campeonato Brasileiro runners-up: 1971, 1973, 1977, 1981, 1989, 1990, 2007, 2014
Campeonato Paulistano: 1905, 1908, 1913, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1921, 1926, 1927, 1931, 1943, 1945, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1953, 1957, 1970, 1971, 1975, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2021
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