Dear Scotty,
This week, my journalism class was assigned a multimedia report on any topic we wanted. Since I have been to two FC Barcelona games, and I know how much you love the team and Messi, I decided to do my project on this. Here is a little bit about the club’s rivalries, jersey, crest, and history.
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In the last century, FC Barcelona has dominated in football and has become one of the world’s best sports team to exist. With players like Jordi Alba, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, and Lionel Messi, there is no doubt that this could possibly be the best Barcelona team ever. This team has a great chance to win the 2016 UEFA European Championship and it is beginning to look like the club is actually getting even better than it already is. FC Barcelona past history has played a huge contribution to the club’s success, and with the support of their fans, it appears that this team has become unstoppable.
History of FC Barcelona
FC Barcelona, also known as Barça, was founded on November 29, 1899 by a group of twelve young foreigners living in Barcelona who were enthusiastic about ‘foot-ball’. Hans Gamper, the most recognizable of this group and the clubs creator, was the inspiration and driving force behind the club’s 
first 25 years. On November 28, Hans placed an advertisement in the Los Deportes declaring his wish to form a football club. A day later, lluís d’Ossó, Bartomeu Terradas, Otto Kunzle, Otto Maier, Enric Ducal, Pere Cabot, Carles Pujol, Josep Llobet, John Parsons, William Parson, and Walter Wild responded to this advertisement and agreed to meet at the Gimnasio Sole. The club played amateur football for eleven years in various regional competitions, and then in 1910, started to participate in many European competitions. Hans became FC Barcelona’s president in 1908 to save the club from bankruptcy and helped Barcelona acquire its own stadium and thus achieve a stable income. Around the same time, FC Barcelona changed its official language from Castilian to Catalan and gradually evolved into an important symbol of the Catalan identity. Many of their fans began to want to associate themselves as part of the club’s collective identity and cared less with the actual game itself. In 
1928, Barcelona co-founded the Primera Division, known in English as La Liga. The Primera Division is the top professional association football division of the Spanish football league system and is contested by 20 teams. FC Barcelona and Real Madrid have dominated the league in championships since the 1950s, with Barcelona having won the title 22 times and Real Madrid 32 times.
Club Rivalries
Typically in any national league, the two strongest teams have a fierce rivalry between them. In the La Liga league, this is the particular case between Real Madrid and Barcelona, and the game they play each other is known as El Clásico. The rivalry comes about as these are the two largest cities in Spain, and the two clubs are among the most successful and richest football clubs in the world.The rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid transcends the national politics of Spain and largely divides football fans of the world. Jose Mourinho, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Real Madrid epitomize qualities of strength, power, aggression, and cockiness. Tito Villanova, Messi, and Barcelona exude patience, skill, humility, and teamwork. Each individual fan can choose which team to support based on which qualities he or she values. In this way, most football fans are polarized to either the Tiki-taka style of Barcelona or the Blitzkrieg style of Real Madrid. While it is uncertain which philosophy futbolistica is objectively better, it is certain that each individual fan will have his or her opinion about which is the ideal.
Espanyol is FC Barcelona’s local rival because of their founding message of their club was clearly anti-Barcelona, and they disapprovingly saw Barca as a team of foreigners. Catalonians saw this as a provocative representation of Madrid, which only strengthened this rival. Both of these teams are from Barcelona, Spain, and the football match between the two clubs is known as El derbi Barceloní. In almost 70 years, Espanyol has only managed to end above Barcelona on three occasions, causing Barcelona to overwhelmingly dominant this match.
Club’s Jersey
For more than 100 years, scarlet and blue have been featured on the club’s football jerseys. For the home jersey, the shirts have remained relatively constant in design over the years, but for the first ten years, the team shorts were white, and then switched to black until 1920. From 1920 onwards, the shorts have only been blue. The reason why FC Barcelona chose to wear these colors have been a matter of debate among club historians for many years, and nobody has ever managed to provide substantial evidence that the colors were chosen for any symbolic reason. The common perception in Catalonia is that the colors were adopted from a Swiss club that Gamper had found earlier in his life. Another theory is that the founders based their choice on the colors of red and blue accountancy pencils that were very popular at the time. Arthur Witty, the son of the first president, claimed it was the idea of his father that the colors should be the same as the Merchant Taylor’s School team. Unfortunately, none of these theories have ever managed to offer conclusive evidence on why Barcelona has chosen these colors from its earliest days, but what can be sure is that these shirts have gone on to be one of the most recognizable and enigmatic shirt designs in football.
The blue and red jersey is for home games, while the red and yellow is for away games.
Crest of Barcelona
FC Barcelona has had its own emblem that the players proudly wore on their jersey ever since the club was founded. It is a diamond shape divided into four quarters, with a bat and crown on top that are surrounded by two branches, one of a palm tree and the other of a laurel tree. Even at the early stages of the club, this was a way of expressing the club’s link to the city in which it was born., A decision was made shortly after Gamper had saved the club from a serious financial crisis in 1908 to give the club its
own differentiated crest. Two years later, a competition was held between all the members interested in presenting proposals, and the winner of this competition was Carles Comamala. While Carles played for the club from 1903 to 1912, he also was studying medicine and fine arts. His love for the game and his artistic ability gave him the opportunity to create a crest that the club still wears today, with some minor variations. The crest is a bowl-shaped design, with the two upper quarters having the St. George Cross. The top right quarter has yellow and red bars from the original design that represent symbols of Catalonia and Barcelona. On the strip across the center, the club initials appear, and below are the colors of the Barcelona home jersey with a ball in the middle. This crest honors the sporting dimension of the club as well as connecting its city and country.
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I love you,
Libby
Dear Scotty, 