Villa Facts?

[cdbearsfan]

Hi all

there are a few Villa facts that I have heard of, but can't find any internet reserarch to back them up.

Can anyone shed light on whether the following are actually true...

(i) FIFA named Villa as Team of the (Nineteenth) Century.

(ii) Barcelona copied our colours.

(iii) Arsenal copied our kit design.

[cdbearsfan]

If anyone knows why we 'scratched' against Oxford University I would also like to know why.

[Steve Z]

Barcelona colours....
Hans Gamper had been a member of FC Basel in Switzerland founded in 1893. As he was also its playing captain in the year prior to his move to Barcelona, a connection is at least plausible. FC Basel has the colours blue and red as seen on the shirt of 2006/2007 below. Depending on the language you read it in, Wikipedia either agrees, tentatively agrees, or refutes this claim

Arsenal did not copy our kit design I believe that Arsenal's kit came from borrowing Nottingham Forest shirts and adding white sleeves

As for the FIFA question no idea.

[peter w]

Arsenal's original colours were copied from us. hence in their centenary season a couple of years back they reverted to a more claret type kit.

[dave.woodhall]

Barcelona's colours came from the flag of the canton of their (Swiss) founder. Arsenal supposedly adopted white sleeves to their red shirts because Herbert Chapman wanted their kit to look more like Villa's. That one's unconfirmed.