Two children wearing red, yellow and purple shirts ran around one of London's oldest football pitches cheering on their team.
They were too young to understand the historical significance of non-league Clapton CFC's vibrant outfit, but their parents, who sat in the stands watching the game, were well aware.
The East London club, founded in 2018, designed the shirt as a tribute to the Second Spanish Republic and the International Volunteer Brigades, who fought against Nazi-German-backed nationalists during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
With support for right-wing movements growing across Europe, the shirt became a symbol of the club's left-leaning ideals and opposition to fascism, racism, homophobia and misogyny.
At Clapton CFC's ground, known as the 'Old Spotted Dog', fans wear scarves that say 'Anti-Fascist' as they watch the Eastern Counties Football League Division 1 South match against Hutton FC. Was.
“Wearing this shirt is a way of showing respect to them,” one supporter told AFP, referring to those who took part in the Spanish Civil War after an attempted military coup against the democratically elected government in 1936. Told.
Club spokesperson Sukhdev Dzhokhar said more than 20,000 shirts had been sold since the shirts were designed in 2018, 8,000 of which were purchased by people living in Spain.
“We have sold jerseys in more than 60 countries,” he said, adding that there were also plans to erect a monument in honor of the International Brigades at the stadium.
“This reflects the legacy left behind by the brigade and the (Spanish) diaspora who fled after the civil war.”
Dzhokhar said the club's strong stance on liberal ideals was “not in the club constitution” but in the spirit it had cultivated since its founding.
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The shirt design was born when one of England's oldest football clubs, Clapton FC, split to form Clapton CFC.
The new club, owned by 1,700 supporters and run by volunteers, organized a competition among its members to find a design for the away kit.
Sixteen ideas were submitted, but the winning design was inspired by the colors of the flag of the Spanish Republic.
The shirt design also incorporates the phrase “No pasarán” (“They shall not pass”), which was used by one of Spain's Communist Party leaders during the civil war.
Since then, the club has received messages from fans all over the world.
One of them, Alfred Head, a British man in his 90s who lives in Nice in the south of France, campaigned in support of Spaniards during the dictatorship when he was young.
“I'm not a soccer fan, but I will wear this jersey proudly when I go for a walk,” he said in a letter to the club.
Many of the club's supporters are descendants of the more than 2,500 British and Irish people who served in the International Brigades.
“My father left Liverpool when he was 17, but was too young to join the International Brigades, so he crossed Europe and the Pyrenees alone,” one of his descendants wrote.
The Spanish Civil War, which claimed an estimated 500,000 lives, ended in 1939 with the victory of General Francisco Franco's Nationalist Party.
Franco ruled Spain as a dictator until his death in 1975.
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