On 3 May 1924, the day of the town's municipal holiday, a group of young men in Barcelos in northern Portugal founded Gil Vicente. On 3 May 2027 the "Roosters" turn 103 years old. It is a story of theatre, legends and plenty of stubbornness.

A bench in front of the theatre

The founders met every day on a bench in Largo do Teatro, today's Largo Doutor Martins Lima. Opposite them stood the Gil Vicente theatre, and that is where the new team got its name: Gil Vicente Foot-ball Barcelense.

Before it, the town had seen short-lived clubs such as Barcellos Sporting Club and União Foot-ball Club Barcellense. Gil Vicente, however, survived, although it only officially joined the Braga Football Association in 1931.

A playwright on the shirt

The theatre in turn honoured Gil Vicente, the 16th-century Portuguese playwright who wrote, among other works, "Auto da Barca do Inferno" in 1517. Some historians even considered him a native of Barcelos, although this is not certain.

So a man of the theatre became, four centuries later, the name of a football club. Its fans are called gilistas, the "followers of Gil".

Red, green, yellow and blue

The first shirt was red. It was followed by green and white horizontal stripes, then yellow and red, the town's colours, and later blue.

In the end the club settled on red and blue, although sources do not explain why. Today the main shirt is usually red, while the alternative kits tend to be blue and white.

The rooster of Barcelos

The nickname Galos (Roosters) comes from the town's most famous symbol. According to legend, a pilgrim from Galicia was wrongly accused of theft and sentenced to hang.

He swore that his innocence was as certain as the fact that the roast rooster on the judge's table would crow. The rooster, so the story goes, crowed and the pilgrim was saved.

On the badge, however, the club prefers the town's coat of arms. In 2021 the members voted to bring back, in a modernised form, the emblem the team used from 1938 to 2005.

From Adelino Ribeiro Novo to Europe

For 71 years the team's home was the ground that opened in 1933 as Campo da Granja. It was renamed Adelino Ribeiro Novo in honour of one of its players, who died on the pitch after a collision with an opponent in the mid-1940s; sources disagree on the exact year. Since 2004 the team has played at the Estádio Cidade de Barcelos.

The first promotion to the top flight came in 1990 and the first national title in 1999, by winning the second division. In 2006 the club was relegated off the pitch over the "Mateus affair", for fielding the Angolan forward when he was ineligible, and only returned to the top flight by administrative decision in 2019.

Vindication came in 2021-22: fifth place and a first European ticket, with a win over Riga before elimination by AZ Alkmaar in the Conference League. Players who wore its shirt include Paulo Alves, Ljubinko Drulović and Fran Navarro, its top-flight record scorer with 33 goals.

Celebrate with us

From a bench in front of a theatre to European nights, Gil Vicente has written 103 years of grit in a red shirt.

Happy birthday, Galos! May you crow loudly for many more years.

See our collectible jerseys at sportarena.gr.

Photo: Estádio Cidade de Barcelos, home of Gil Vicente – JP Ribeiro, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.