Real
Sociedad are a Basque football team from San Sebastián/Donostia
in Guipúzcoa/Gipuzkoa. Founded on September 17, 1909, they
currently play in the Primera División.
Known as the txuri-urdin ("white-blue" in Guipuzcoan Basque),
from their colors: blue with white vertical stripes and white
shorts. A blue quarter on white also appears in the flag of
their home town. Home stadium is the Anoeta that seats 32,000
spectators. The club has announced plans to build a completely
new ground known as the Gipuzkoarena ("Guipuzcoa's"), which will
seat 42,400 and is scheduled to open in 2007.
Given the Real ("royal") title by King Alfonso XIII when San
Sebastián was summer capital of Spain (see also Real Madrid and
Real Betis), Real Sociedad were one of the founder members of
the National Championship league in 1928-29. That season, the
team finished fourth, with Benzobas being the highest scorer of
the Championship. The team's name changed to Donostia Football
Club in 1931, with the advent of the Second Spanish Republic,
but changed back to Real Sociedad after the Civil War in 1939.
The team has generally fluctuated between the Primera and
Segunda divisions, in one period (during the 1940s) managing to
be relegated and promoted seven times. The best period of the
team's history must be the early 1980s where they won the
Primera two seasons running.
For many years, Real Sociedad followed the practice of their
Basque rival Athletic Bilbao of signing only Basque players.
They abandoned the policy in 1989 when they signed Irish
international John Aldridge from Liverpool. The team that
finished a surprising second in La Liga in 2002-03 dramatically
illustrated this change. Key contributors to that side included
a Serb (Darko Kovacevic), a Turk (Nihat Kahveci), a Russian
(Valeri Karpin), and a Dutch goalkeeper (Sander Westerveld).
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