20 Surprising and Rare Facts about FC Barcelona

FC Barcelona fans know about Messi’s goals and Camp Nou glory, but even La Masia’s attic holds secrets most never hear. From the club’s birth in 1899 through modern times, Barca’s history is full of quirky incidents and behind-the-scenes tales that are seldom told outside the Culers’ circle.

Here are 20 of the most surprising and little-known anecdotes that prove why Barcelona truly is ‘mes que un club’.

1.Gamper’s Hilarious Ad

When founder Joan Gamper arrived in 1898, he had to recruit players by advertising in Los Deportes magazine. The October 1899 ad misspelled everything as it invited readers to join “Mr. Kans Kamper” of the “foot-vall” section. The piece even explained football itself as the “ball through a wooden gate” to clueless readers. Despite the comedy, the ad worked, and a month later, Gamper and eleven men officially formed FC Barcelona.

2.Barca’s Blaugrana Came From Liverpool

Everyone assumes Gamper’s Swiss roots explain the blue and maroon stripes, but club research reveals a different story. Decades later, a founder’s grandson wrote to the Merchant Taylors' School in Liverpool, where the Witty brothers had studied, and discovered that the school's rugby team wore blue and garnet. In fact, Barcelona’s iconic colours matched those of the school’s 19th-century rugby kit. The match was quite clear, yet the clue was almost forgotten.

3.Early Players Were Paid in Soap

In Barcelona’s very first years, the team was so broke that members paid only 1 peseta each month, barely €0.30 today. To get by, generous members would sneak into the locker rooms and leave donated bars of soap or spare footballs for the team’s use. One founder, Ernest Witty, later noted that the footballs he gave away were worth enough to buy a car. In those days, players were their own sponsors.

4.The One-Eyed Winger

Swiss forward George Meyer played for Barca (1901-04) with a glass eye hidden from opponents. In one Catalan championship match against Catala, Meyer collided with a defender, and his glass eye popped out onto the pitch. Everyone gasped until Meyer calmly picked it up and quipped to the defender. “Don’t worry, I still got the other one.” From then on, nobody doubted he was one-eyed.

5.Playing Without a Ball

In February 1904, Barca hosted Internacional, but a funny fiasco almost stopped the game. Rules then required each side to bring two balls, yet by halftime, both of Barca’s balls had burst. The visiting team had brought no backup, so a volunteer sprinted to a neighbouring pitch and borrowed a ball from FC X so the game could continue. Barca later protested they lost 2-1, but one can only imagine the look on the poor groundkeeper’s face as he loaned his ball to the league leader.

6.Sloping and Shirtless Pitches

In June 1906, Barca played a bizarre friendly with only nine men a side on a slanted field. The goalkeeper, Roma Sola, and a striker, Enric Barrauer, even wore street clothes instead of kits. The slope was so extreme that players joked that goals are easier up the slope, but with it in your favour, you dominate the game more. Barca lost 4-2, partly because Sola kept stepping away from the goal to stay clean. Meanwhile, Barraquer captialised on the chaos, and a defender thought he was the referee as referees had no uniforms back then and let him slip past to score.

7.Sandwiches, Lemons, and Flowers

Early Barca games were almost like picnics. At the Carrer Industria ground (1909-22), every child attending a match got a free ham sandwich at the gate. During halftime, an usher named Narcis Deop would stroll on the field, handing out lemons to thirsty players. And in a charming tradition, the players themselves would present bouquets to the ladies in the crowd after each season’s final match. It was Barca in the era of lemonade and love.

8.The Great Trophy Hideout of 1925

In June 1925, Barca’s future looked grim after fans booed the Spanish anthem at Les Corts. Anticipating trouble, the club was about to be forced to close for six months. A low-level employee acting on his own whisked away Barca’s most important items that night. Two typewriters, the membership printer, trophies, pennants, and all the club records were packed into boxes and hidden ina dark storage room of an old office on Carrer Aribau. Six months later, everything was returned unharmed, and nobody on board ever noticed the inventory was missing.

9.Train Ride to Referee

In February 1934, Barca needed an emergency sub for an away match in Santander. Young forward Mario Cabanes rushed by train from Bilbao, but the trains were delayed. Nervous, he struck up a chat with the stranger next to him, only to find the man was Mr. Steimborn, the scheduled match referee, running late too. “Don’t worry, kid,” the man reassured him, “there won’t be a match until I get there because I am the referee.” Both arrived just in time as Barca lost 3-1, but Cabanes remembered never being so surprised to meet the referee en route to the game.

10.Chalkboard Mischief

Defender Gustavo Biosca was quite the prankster. The night before a 1954 match, he slipped into coach Sandro Puppp’s locker room and doodled extra arrows all over the tactical board. When Puppo began his team talk, he never noticed the extra lies, instead carrying on as if nothing changed. Barca still won 4-1, much to Puppo’s surprise, and Biosca later joked that the victory was “thanks to his arrows”.

11.Bowling instead of Football

In 1955, Barca even had a bowling section. Members of the Bolopins club organised Barcelona’s first bowling team, and on February 18, 1955, they hosted Espanyol in a city bowling derby. The stands were packed at FC Barcelona’s bowling lanes, and Barca won both men’s and women’s events that day. It was one of the club’s rare victories over Espanyol, and just on wooden pins instead of a soccer ball.

12.Boxing Practice for a Ballon d’Or

When Hungarian coach Ferenc Plattko returned to Barca in 1955, he wanted his players to be as tough as he was. Catching lean 20-year-old Luis Suarez in the dressing room, he forced the midfielder to spar for half an hour after each training session. Luis had enough after one week, and he told Platkko that he was here to play football, not boxing. Suarez was right, and soon after, he became a Ballon d’Or winner for his football skills.

13.Architects vs Builders at Camp Nou

The very first game on the as-yet-finished Camp Nou was a tongue-in-cheek affair. On 10 August 1956, Barca organised a match between architects and construction workers of the new stadium. The architects prevailed 2-1, and as the story goes, a certain Hernandez scored the first goal in Barca’s new home. It took ten more days before the stadium’s official inauguration, and this was the dress rehearsal on dirt.

14.Movie Nights with Helenio

Coach Helenio Herrera (1958-60) famously controlled every detail, even the players’ entertainment. He would promise the squad a night at the cinema, polling them for preferred genres. But the players’ vote was just for show, Herrera had already bought tickets in secret to a film he had personally pre-screened. In other words, the team got a movie, but only the one Herrera thought they should see.

15.Kubala’s Cold Window Stunt

In Spring 1961, on the morning of the European Cup Final in Bern, veteran Ladislao (Laszlo) Kubala shared a hotel room with young defender Foncho Rodriguez. Foncho was still snuggled under the duvet when Kubala suddenly flung open the window and took a deep breath of frigid Alpine air, proclaiming it was pure oxygen that was good for the game. Foncho panicked and yelled for him to close it before he caught pneumonia. The incident perfectly illustrated Kubala’s fearless dedication to training and left Foncho bitterly cold.

16.Kubala the Book Thief

The saga with Kubala continued off the pitch. Foncho remembered that Kubala, as coach in the early 1960s, would confiscate Foncho’s bedtime books to force him to sleep early. Ever the reader, Foncho got around this by secretly carrying two books. Whenever Kubala took the first one away, Foncho simply pulled out the second to keep reading in peace. It was a sly way to beat the coach at his own game.

17.200 Unwanted Barca Calls

18.In 1966, a small typo caused big confusion. The local press published Barca’s new telephone number (at La Masia) with a digit wrong. The number actually belonged to a completely unrelated man, who endured about 200 calls intended for the club before anyone noticed the error. By a lucky stroke, it turned out he was a lifelong Barcelona fan, so he took it with good humour. The incident became a legendary anecdote of Barca’s fanaticism.

18.The Motto’s Origin under Franco

Today, every fan knows Barca’s slogan ‘Mes Que Un Club’, which means ‘More Than a Club’, but its roots are rarely remembered. In January 1968, incoming president Narcis de Carreras used those words in his acceptance speech to hint that FC Barcelona stood for Catalan identity under Franco’s dictatorship. He said Barca was not just about sport and that it represented a higher cause. The phrase caught on over the next decade and now adorns the stadium, a motto born of politics and pride.

19.Neeskens’ Corridor of Flowers

Johan Neeskens was so adored that a single knee surgery turned into a floral parade. In December 1977, while Neeskens recuperated at Clinica Sagrada Familia, journalist Jaum Boix arrived for an interview to find the entire hospital corridor lined with fans’ flower bouquets. Boix said he had never seen anything like it as a vivid testament to how Barca supporters revered the Dutch midfielder. Neeskends himself was famously humble, but that day he must have felt like royalty.

20.Rottweilers at Camp Nou

In the 1994-95 season, Camp Nou underwent renovations that removed the old moats separating the pitch and the crowd. To prevent pitch invasions, the club reportedly contracted four Rottweiler dogs as security guards. These calm but powerful dogs, affectionately named Trotsky, Demon, etc., patrolled the sidelines on match days. Five years later, with fans generally well-behaved, Barca reduced the canine squad to just two “security” Rottweilers.

As you can see, FC Barcelona’s history is full of quirks and courage, soap bars in locker rooms, mascots on legs, mischievous players, and a motto born of resistance. These tales remind us that Barca really has always been more than a club.