Joan Gamper, was born in the city of Winterthur, in Switzerland, on November 22, 1877.
Joan began playing sports in many disciplines, from athletics to soccer, to basketball and cycling.
Endowed with exceptional vitality and a great capacity as an athlete, the player was in various clubs both in Switzerland and in France.
In Switzerland he played as a forward for FC Basel and shortly after for Excelsior.
Around that time, Joan decided to found the FC Zurich team, which is currently the most important in Switzerland and one of the leading in Europe.
In 1899, Joan arrived in Barcelona, after having spent two years in Lyon, where he played rugby.
Gamper settled very close to a colony of compatriots in the Sant Gervasi neighborhood, where he would play football.
Joan then decides, through a press release, to summon all football fans to found a football club in the city.
On November 29, 1899, between 6 Catalans and other Swiss, they founded what they would call Club Football of Barcelona (Football Club Barcelona) and who they would make wear the FC Basel clothing, blue and maroon.
Joan also played soccer in the team, until 1903. taking part in the first Macaya Cup, in 1901.
Later, Joan was appointed president of the “Blaugrana” entity several times, the first being from December 2, 1908 to October 14, 1909.
At that time Gamper decided to change his name and began to learn Catalan.
As president of the entity, he personally took care of the hiring of the player Paulino Alcántara, one of the most important footballers in the history of the “club culé”.
In 1922, Joan contributed one million pesetas to the founding of the Campo de Les Corts.
During the early 1920s, Joan actively participated in the Catalan nationalist movement, so General Primo de Rivera decided to throw him out of Spain.
A short time later, and under special conditions, Joan returns to Barcelona. These conditions were the total separation from the club, from his Spanish and Swiss friends and from all the benefits that he enjoyed until he went into exile.
In 1929, and as a result of the Great Depression, Joan was completely ruined and that has just marked him definitively, creating an instability and depressive character that until that moment he did not have.
On July 30, 1930, Joan Gamper took her own life by shooting herself. while he was at home.
During the burial, which took place a day later, hundreds of thousands of people gathered, who wanted to be present at it.
Joan Gamper has a street in the Les Corts neighborhood, in Barcelona, Spain. Likewise, the FC Barcelona entity has a trophy with its name on it, which marks the beginning of the Spanish League.
Another of the characteristics of the Catalan club is that it is a multisport club, that is, with different types of disciplines, just as Joan Gamper wanted.