Reial Club Deportiu Espanyol de Barcelona, commonly known as Espanyol, is a professional sports club based in Barcelona, Spain, that competes in Segunda División, the second tier of the Spanish football league system.
Founded in 1900 in Barcelona, Espanyol currently play their home games at the RCDE Stadium, which holds up to 40,000 spectators. Domestically, Espanyol has won the Copa del Rey four times, most recently in 2006. In international competitions, the club reached the UEFA Cup final in 1988 and 2007. It has a long-standing rivalry with FC Barcelona.
Espanyol was founded on 28 October 1900 by Ángel Rodríguez Ruiz (1879—1959), an engineering student at the University of Barcelona. The club's original home was in the well-off district of Sarrià] and was initially known as the Sociedad Española de Football. One year later, the club changed its name to Club Español de Fútbol. Espanyol was the first club in Spain to be formed exclusively by Spanish fans of the game.
The club originally played in bright yellow shirts, with the colour of the shorts being left to the individual player. A friend of the club founder owned a textile business and happened to have an abundance of yellow material left over from a job. In 1910, the club changed its name to Club Deportivo Español and chose blue and white stripes as shirt colours and as the central colours of the club badge. Blue and white was chosen in homage to the colours appearing on the shield of the great Sicilian-Aragonese Admiral Roger de Lluria, who sailed the Mediterranean protecting the interests of the Crown of Aragon in the Middle Ages. The club were successful from the very beginning, winning the Campionat de Catalunya in 1903 and subsequently playing in the Copa del Rey.
Chen Yansheng
Manolo González
Current season
RCD Espanyol
