Football in Peru

Football is the most popular sport in Peru. According to a survey, 77.3% of Peruvians were interested in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, demonstrating the country's strong passion for football.

Football in Peru was introduced by British immigrants, Peruvians returning from Great Britain, and by English sailors in the later half of the 19th century during their frequent stops at the port of Callao, which at that point was considered one of the most important ports of the Pacific Ocean. According to the work entitled La Difusión del Fútbol en Lima, during the last decade of the 19th century, records show that sailors were known to practice sports such as football/soccer and played against teams made up of Englishmen, Peruvians, or a mix between Englishmen and Peruvians.

Lima is home to an important sporting institution, it was founded in 1845 by English immigrants as Salon de Comercio, renamed in 1859 as the Lima Cricket Club, and was based around the sports of cricket, rugby, and football, the club underwent many other name changes such as in 1865 to Lima Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club and in 1906 to Lima Cricket and Football Club. During the War of the Pacific (1879 - 1883), the destruction of various Peruvian towns and cities, including the raid of Lima, brought the spread of sport in Peru to a momentary stop. The oldest football records are found for a Callao vs. Lima match on August 7, 1892, and an Englishmen vs. Peruvian match on June 24, 1894.

After the war, the sports rivalry that evolved between the foreigners and the Chalacos began to gain much attention from people elsewhere. As a result, the popularity of the sport eventually extended to Lima, and even though at first the sport was played without the formality of sports clubs, a few clubs were eventually created in order to continue its practice in the early 20th century. Among these early clubs of the amateur era were the English community's Lima Cricket Club founded in 1859 although it is unclear when they first played football, their oldest recorded match having been played on August 7, 1892. They were followed by the Peruvian Ciclista Lima Association (Lima, 1896), and Atlético Chalaco (Callao, 1899).

In the 1900s, due to the construction of the Panama Canal, the port of Callao was no longer flooded with the quantity of foreign sailors and travelers that had at one point made the port a point of much cultural diffusion. Nonetheless, by this moment more Peruvian cities had developed their own football clubs and leagues, the most important being those of Lima, Cusco, and Arequipa. Some of the most important new clubs founded at this time were Alianza Lima (Lima, 1901), Cienciano (Cusco, 1901), FBC Melgar (Arequipa, 1915), the Italian community's Circolo Sportivo Italiano (Lima, 1917), Atlético Grau (Piura, 1919), Alianza Atletico (Sullana, 1920), Universitario de Deportes (Lima, 1924), Sport Boys (Callao, 1927), and Coronel Bolognesi (Tacna, 1929). As such, the sport rapidly grew in Peru, but the most important amateur league (the Peruvian Football League) stayed in the capital province where a new football rivalry arose between the participating clubs of Lima and the clubs of Callao. Yet, the lack of a central organization often brought much conflict between the teams, and such a situation eventually escalated into a conflict that led to the creation of the Peruvian Football Federation in 1922 and a new Peruvian Football League tournament under the regulation of said organization in 1926.

The following list is the known first friendly matches according to the data published in the newspapers of that time.

Even though the Peruvian Football Federation had joined CONMEBOL in 1925, the re-structuring of the national league prevented the creation of a national football team that would be able to participate in the South American Championships of 1925 and 1926. Moreover, even though in the club level Peru had a series of strong teams, the Peru national team for the 1929 South American Championship was the first successful attempt at a Peru national team. Their first game played against Uruguay (recent winners of the Football Olympics), showed a largely disunited team still trying to mold into a team. The disunity could largely be blamed on class conflict and racial discrimination. The first fielded team was built largely of players from Alianza Lima and Universitario de Deportes, the former being composed of working-class men and the later of white university students. Alianza players felt more loyal to their local team than to the national team, and when it became clear that they were being segregated from the rest of the team and left out of the starting IX, they resigned from the national team before play at the South American Cup; they lost every match. The Football Federation approached the Alianza players again, and offered them reinstatement. Alianza agreed to the federation's terms, and played in the 1930 World Cup.

The time that followed saw the appearance of a group of excellent Peruvian football players that would help further expand the popularity of the sport not only in Peru, but also in other countries of South America. During the 1920s and 1930s, Peruvian clubs made a series of international tours across South America due to the high demand of the skill of their players in places such as Colombia, Venezuela, and in Chile. Peru's art of skill and technique of association football was felt and given a highly positive look in these many countries. In Colombia, the appearance of Ciclista Lima Association allegedly made the Colombian crowds "vibrate with excitement" as they anticipated much skill from the Peruvian squad. In 1928, the Peruvian club Atlético Chalaco made a tour in Chile and defeated seven Chilean teams they faced and only lost to Colo-Colo. In 1933 Alianza Lima made a tour in Chile and, with Peruvians such as Teodoro Fernandez and Alejandro Villanueva, delighted the audiences with their skill and defeated a series of important Chilean clubs of that time such as Club Deportivo Magallanes, Santiago Wanderers, Audax Italiano, and Colo-Colo. In Peru, Alejandro Villanueva is often remembered as one of the finest exponents of that nation's association football and as the player that amazed the crowds with his bicycle kicks which the people of Lima at first thought was his invention when he executed it in 1928 and it was called "tiro caracol" and, later, upon learning of its roots in Callao, once again called chalaca. In 1930, they were invited to participate in a new intercontinental competition to be held in Montevideo, Uruguay, the first FIFA World Cup.