Charles William Miller
October 26, 1902: The 1st Campeonato Paulista is held, the 1st soccer/football/futebol championship of any kind in Brazil, the country that would do so much to make the sport the world's game.
São Paulo Athletic Club, established in 1888 by British people living in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, won the game, 2-1 over Paulistano, at the Velódromo Paulistano, a bicycle racing track.
The team was led by SPAC's founder and goalkeeper, Charles William Miller, born in 1874 to a Scottish railway engineer and his English wife in São Paulo. He was sent back to England for his education, and learned his soccer in Southampton. He would be both a top scorer and, later in his career, a goalkeeper. He is considered the founding father of Brazilian football, and also of Brazilian rugby union.
SPAC would also win the championship in 1903, 1904 and 1911. But in 1912, the club retired from football competition. It would continue to compete in other sports, specializing in rugby union, but not in soccer. Miller lived until 1953.
Brazil's other States would develop their own championships: Bahia in 1905; Rio de Janeiro in 1906; Pará and Paraíba in 1908; Amazonas in 1914; Ceará, Minas Gerais, Paraná and Pernambuco in 1915; Piauí in 1916; Espírito Santo in 1917; Maranhão, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe in 1918; Acre and Rio Grande do Sul in 1919; Santa Catarina in 1924; Alagoas in 1927; Mato Grosso in 1936; Amapá and Goiás in 1944; Rondônia in 1945; Roraima in 1946; the Distrito Federal (Brasilia) in 1959; Mato Grosso do Sul in 1979; and Tocantins in 1989.
There would not be a national league until Série A was founded in 1937. And there would not be a national tournament like England's FA Cup until the Copa do Brasil was founded in 1989.
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October 26, 1902 was a Sunday. There were no other scores to report on this historic day: Baseball season had just ended, and in a professional sense, football, basketball and hockey barely existed.
On this day, future Heavyweight Champion Jack Sharkey was born. So was British writer, aviator and racehorse trainer Beryl Markham. So was American astronomer Henrietta Hill Swope.
