Real Betis

Two football clubs once shared the same city and watched each other with more suspicion than affection. One grew out of a group of students at Seville's Escuela Politécnica, who in 1907 called themselves Sevilla Balompié. The two ran in parallel until September 1914, when they merged. King Alfonso XIII marked the union by granting the new club the title Real, and Real Betis Balompié took the name it has carried since.

The old rivalry never really left the city. Sevilla FC came to be associated with the wealthier quarters of Nervión, Betis with the working-class district of Heliópolis, and the derbi sevillano still carries that line whenever the two sides meet.

Silverware has been rare enough that each trophy is remembered on its own terms. Three Copa del Rey wins came later — in 1977, in 2005, and, most recently, via a penalty shootout against Valencia in 2022.

No player has come to stand for the club quite like Joaquín Sánchez, who left and returned across two spells between 1994 and 2023. Home games are currently played at the Estadio de La Cartuja while the Benito Villamarín is rebuilt, with a return set for 2027 — to a ground that, before the work began, held 60,721 people, a number Joaquín himself walked out to more than 600 times.