Why Argentine club Ferro Carril Oeste are launching an Aston Villa-inspired kit

New York Times

21-02-2025

Based in the city of Buenos Aires, a second-division football side is keen to learn its roots.
Ferro Carril Oeste Club — simply referred to as Ferro — was founded in 1904 by 95 employees from the 'Ferrocarril del Oeste company', a Western Railway service that ran through Buenos Aires. Ferro's glory years came in the 1980s, winning Argentina's top-flight title twice while replicating similar success with its sister basketball team, which became one of the most successful clubs in that period.
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Ferro were welcomed into Argentina's playing leagues in 1905. Competition stepped up the following year. Ferro entered into the third division and, strangely enough, wore shirts purchased from London.
More specifically, though, the jerseys were adorned with Aston Villa's crest.
How and why Villa's influence on a young, nascent club in Argentina materialised remains a mystery. There are tales of a match against British sailors, after which Ferro decided they would adopt a claret-coloured kit and blue sleeves.
Staff now working at Ferro want to learn more.
'We know little about our founding fathers and only now have we decided to investigate those early years more thoroughly,' Ferro's administrator, Daniel Eugenio Visciglio, tells The Athletic. 'Our club's beginnings were built on Aston Villa's jerseys in 1906 and 1907. We would like to contact historians to find out how they were manufactured or acquired in our city.'
Despite the unknowns, Villa's fabric — literally and figuratively — has been woven into Ferro's history. They wore claret and blue in their early years before returning to the colour pattern intermittently.
'The largest group of British workers were the Irish in the early 20th century,' says Visciglio. 'So they pushed for us to change our colours to green in 1910.'
In 2000 and coinciding with their first promotion in 22 years, Ferro's decision to wear a Villa-inspired kit went down well with locals, enthused by a homage to the club's inception.
'The Aston Villa colours were only used again in the 2000-01 campaign,' Visciglio says. 'Unfortunately, the next two years were turbulent and terrible from an economic point of view and after a terrible campaign, we were relegated. Our supporters catalogued the Aston Villa colours as 'bad luck'. Obviously, the colours had nothing to do with our institutional downfall and consecutive relegations.
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'For a long time, we fought to bring back those legendary jerseys — something that was achieved this year.'
Almost a quarter of a century later, this season's third kit is a return to Villa colours, with light blue sleeves and neckline, as well as a claret body. The club say it is to pay tribute while intending to learn more about their early, hazy details.
Ferro wrote to Villa in 2021 to ask if they had any historians who could help them learn more about the two clubs' origins, but neither could find an archivist who could answer enquiries. Last week, Ferro made a fresh attempt, contacting the Premier League outfit once more. At the time of writing, no response has been forthcoming.
Ferro 🤝 @AVFCOfficial
Ferro Carril Oeste are launching a third kit inspired by Aston Villa! 🟣🔵
The design pays tribute to Ferro's early years when the club were donated shirts from Villa after a friendly match between the two sides. pic.twitter.com/V4uklZTbXJ
— Argentina Football Shirts 🇦🇷 (@ARGshirts) February 7, 2025
'We would love to get in touch with any Villa historians to find out if any of our club's directors in 1906 were associated with Aston Villa,' adds Visciglio. 'The reason for our choice to play with Villa kits is not entirely clear.
'It is thought the Villa shirt was chosen because it was one of the most popular and successful clubs in those Edwardian times, but we do not know for sure whether some of the English managers we had were Villa supporters and simply chose them. We had managers who supported the club: David Simson, Frank Forster, William Beeston, AJ Avery and Sir Henry Bell.'
What Ferro do know, however, is that the shirts were purchased in London and have a rough idea that a railway manager either bought or donated the kits. Ferro's surrounding neighbourhoods had two religious schools in the early 20th century, with an influx of Irish immigrants populating them. Between 1830 and 1930, 45,000 Irish men and women were estimated to have emigrated to Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires. At the time, Villa were among Britain's leading teams.
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'All the staff worked on the railways,' Visciglio adds. 'The English were the directors, the Scots were engineers and the Welsh and Irish did the heavy lifting of laying rails and sleepers. The British and Irish arrival came following Argentina's economic crisis in 1890, with capital warmly welcomed for the construction of railways.'
A company called The Western Railroad of Buenos Aires Limited was founded that year and owned several other companies in Argentina and Uruguay. Its headquarters were in London and owned several railway services in both Argentina and Uruguay. 'Our manager Sir Henry Bell was also chairman of of the board,' says Visciglio.
Another sister club of Ferro's is Penarol, who play in Uruguay's Premier Division and are based in the country's capital, Montevideo. They were controlled by the same railway group and, initially, players would be exchanged between the two sides.
Ferro's stadium, now reaching a maximum capacity of 24,500 spectators, is the oldest in Argentina and the second oldest in Latin America to be continuously located in its place of origin. For the past 120 years, the stadium has been a fixture in the Caballito district of Buenos Aires.
'We must bear in mind that in those years, in Argentina and Uruguay, football players were amateurs and lived off their jobs,' says Daniel. 'For our club, the patronage of the railway company was very important in the first years, since they were close to our stadium. It allowed us to have our stadium right within our home and without having to move, as is what happened with the great majority of Argentinian sports clubs.'