Underdog Stories / Football history

How Did Corinthians Get Their Name? The English Link

How did Corinthians get their name? From English club Corinthian Casuals, whose 1910 Brazil tour inspired five São Paulo railway workers to start a club.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · September 16, 2026

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In 1988 a team of English amateurs walked out at Pacaembu in São Paulo to play Corinthians, one of the biggest clubs in Brazil. The game was billed as "a father and son reunion", and the sons won 1-0. The goal came from Sócrates, who then played much of the second half for the visitors, in chocolate and pink.

Why would a Brazilian captain swap shirts mid-match? Because of a name. Corinthians took theirs from Corinthian FC, an English amateur side that toured Brazil in 1910. Five railway workers watched that team play on 31 August, founded their own club the next day and named it as a tribute to the English club. That English club later merged with Casuals to form Corinthian-Casuals.

How did Corinthians get their name from Corinthian-Casuals?

One correction first. Corinthian-Casuals didn't exist in 1910. It was formed in 1939 from two clubs, Corinthian (1882) and Casuals (1883). The name came from the Corinthian half.

The tour happened because Charles Miller, regarded as the founding father of Brazilian football, invited the team. Corinthian finished unbeaten. They won all six games in São Paulo and Rio, wearing pink and brown shirts. Anselmo Correa, Antonio Pereira, Carlos Silva, Joaquim Ambrosio and Raphael Perrone watched one of those games. They met under a lamp in the Bom Retiro neighbourhood and decided to form a club.

Their first ideas weren't English at all. The early suggestions were Carlos Gomes Football Club and Futebol Clube Santos Dumont. The visitors won out.

Chris Horwedel, who hosts Why We Love This Club, calls the contrast wonderful. An English side tied to elite amateur gentlemen inspired Brazilian workers to build something for everyone. Corinthians is still known as the "Time do Povo", the Team for the People. In Chris's words, the name had escaped the class system that produced it. That's the odd part. The Corinthian ideal was a rich man's ideal, and Brazil kept the name and dropped the rich men.

Why was the English Corinthian club founded in 1882?

To beat Scotland. That's the whole reason.

N.L. "Pa" Jackson, an assistant secretary at the Football Association, wanted a club side that could challenge Scotland. The Scots had a head start. Their team leaned on one club, Queen's Park, while England's players only met up for internationals. Jackson gathered the best amateurs from the public schools and universities. They played midweek matches so Saturdays stayed free for their own clubs.

It worked fast. Within four years there were nine Corinthians in the England team. In 1894 all 11 starters against Wales were Corinthians, and England won 5-1 in Wrexham. They did it again in 1895, and no other club has done it at all.

The results against professionals were rude. Corinthian beat Blackburn Rovers 8-1 shortly after Blackburn won the 1884 FA Cup. In 1889 they were the only club to beat Preston North End's "Old Invincibles", and in 1904 they beat Manchester United 11-3, still United's worst defeat. One of their best players was Andrew Watson, who had played for Scotland and captained them once. The club built to beat the Scots ended up learning from one.

The name itself is a small joke. England international H.A. Swepstowe suggested it, and it was accepted unanimously. Rob Cavallini's club history says the likeliest reason is an old meaning of the word, "man of fashion and pleasure". A dandy, in other words. The sportsmanship legend came later.

The legend was real enough. Goalkeeper Thomas Rowlandson once stood aside to let the other side score a penalty in South Africa, because he refused to accept that anyone would foul on purpose. It was also easy to be that gracious if you were paid by somebody else, or by nobody. Chris says as much. Amateurism at that level was possible because of privilege, and it pretended that being unpaid put everyone on equal ground.

What happened to the English Corinthians in 1914?

They set out to meet their Brazilian namesakes for the first time. They never did.

The First World War was declared while the team was crossing the Atlantic. Many of the players were army reservists, and they headed home to fight. Chris's account has four reserve officers taking the first ship back. The rest reached Rio de Janeiro, saw little beyond the ground, and sailed home to enlist. Their ship changed course to dodge a German gunboat. The squad returned to England without kicking a ball.

“Just imagine being a 9th-tier defender on a Saturday afternoon and hearing Portuguese songs from people whose club has won a World Championship twice. No pressure.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

The bigger loss came after. Recent club research, as Chris tells it, has found more than 100 men who played for Corinthian, Casuals or both and died in the war. A wooden mantle in the clubhouse carries 22 Corinthian names. Another account also says the war cost the club 22 players. A club that treated travel as friendship lost a generation to a different kind of trip.

When did Corinthian and Casuals merge?

On 1 May 1939. By the end of the 1930s, interest in amateur exhibition football was fading. The two clubs already shared players, toured together as "The Corinthians and Casuals" in 1937 and ran under a joint committee.

Casuals had started in 1883 among public school old boys. Unlike Corinthian, they entered regular competitions. Per the episode, they helped found the Isthmian League in 1905 and won the 1936 FA Amateur Cup, beating Ilford 2-0 in a replay in front of 28,000.

The merged club played one match before the Second World War stopped football. In spring 1940 they joined a Red Cross party touring France, which ended abruptly when the German offensive began. After the war the club took Casuals' place in the Isthmian League. They wore chocolate and pink at home and Corinthian white away. Nobody is sure where the pink and brown came from. The club offers two stories, racing silks from a founder or the colours of two schools. Chris says that feels right for a shirt that looks like somebody made a very confident decision and didn't save the meeting notes.

The best postwar side reached the 1956 Amateur Cup Final. They drew 1-1 with Bishop Auckland at Wembley, then lost the replay 4-1 at Ayresome Park. Chris puts the Wembley crowd at about 80,000. That's how big English amateur football used to be.

Why are Corinthian-Casuals now in the ninth tier?

Because the world they were built for ended.

In 1974 the FA scrapped the official line between amateurs and professionals. Corinthian-Casuals wouldn't turn semi-professional, and they slid down the Isthmian divisions. In 1984 they were thrown out of the league because a nomadic club had no suitable ground. Chris wants you to think about that. They once supplied England's entire starting eleven, and now they were being punished for lacking a car park and a turnstile. I'd call that the most Corinthian thing that ever happened to them, and not in a good way.

Both parent clubs were famously nomadic, and so was Corinthian-Casuals for its first five decades. Then, in 1988, the club took over the lease at King George's Field in Tolworth from the crippled Tolworth FC. It was their first ground of their own.

Members and supporters built the place: turnstiles, terracing, seating and the clubhouse. The seats came from Plough Lane, Champion Hill and Havant & Waterlooville's Westleigh Park, and the ground holds 2,000, with 250 seated. A railway bridge frames the approach. Dogs are welcome on a leash.

Survival still takes odd luck. In 2018 they lost a promotion playoff final on penalties to Walton Casuals. Results elsewhere gave them the best points-per-game record among the losing finalists, so they went up anyway. Five seasons in the Isthmian Premier followed, then two relegations. They now play in the Combined Counties League Premier Division South. The club's rules still state an aim to stay strictly amateur while competing as high as possible. Rivals can pay their players. Corinthian-Casuals can't, and the floodlight bill arrives regardless.

Did Sócrates really play for Corinthian-Casuals?

For part of one match, yes. That was the 1988 game at Pacaembu. Rivelino and Wladimir also played. The game was televised live in Brazil on Globo TV, so plenty of people saw it.

The 2015 return was bigger. Fans of Corinthians were asked on a website which club they wanted for a friendly to mark the new stadium. The options were Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea and Corinthian-Casuals. The Casuals took 61% of the vote. The match was on 24 January 2015 at Arena Corinthians, with 26,000 watching. It took the hosts 78 minutes to break the deadlock, and they won 3-0. The most symbolic moment came when the referee stopped play so Jamie Byatt and Danilo could swap shirts. Chris's version has Danilo playing a few minutes in chocolate and pink.

The trip paid actual bills. The club had spent 18 months failing to find sponsors in Tolworth. After they appeared on a Brazilian TV show, they had 17 opportunities within half an hour.

The bond now runs both ways. A London supporters group, Fiel Londres, brings drums and Brazilian songs to King George's Field. In 2020 Corinthians released a third shirt in tribute to the Casuals. Press officer Stuart Tree said it was "mad to think that a little club that plays off the slip road of the Kingston bypass" had been honoured by a two-time world champion. It is mad. It's also exactly how the name got there in the first place.

Chris's episode, "Corinthian-Casuals FC — The Amateur Club That Gave Its Name to a Giant", tells the full story if you want to hear it.