So a group of working class fans - painter and decorators Joaquim Ambrósio, Antônio Pereira and César Nunes; cobbler Rafael Perrone; driver Anselmo Correia; foundry worker;Alexandre Magnani: cook Salvador Lopomo; labourer João da Silva and tailor Antônio Nunes - decided to take matters into their own hands and start their own team. The young men got together on Sept. 1, at 34 Avenida dos Imigrantes in the neighbourhood of Bom Retiro, and wrote up the club's first statute. What they didn't have was money but they secured backing from a man named Miguel Bataglia.Bataglia was an up-market tailor and he liked the idea of forming a new football team. When Bataglia decided to get involved he was named the club's first president.

The new club needed a name. The founders kicked about a bunch of ideas, including Santos Dummont, in tribute to the Brazilian inventor who got an aeroplane off the ground before the Wright Brothers; Carlos Gomes, one of Brazil's best known classical music and opera composer; and Guarani, the name of a local Indian tribe. None of the ideas won universal support, though, and so Joaquim Ambrósio suggested they call themselves after the Corinthians Casuals Football Club, the famous English team that was then ontour in Brazil. The suggestion was a hit and club that would one day become the most beloved in Brazil had a name. The press and fans in Brazil who were following the tour shortened the English club's name to Corinthian's Team and so the founders did away with the aopstrophe and the club won its elegant name Corinthians.

Finally, the club picked colours. The club's first strip was beige with black trim and had the distinctive letters "C" and "P" - for Corinthians Paulista - intertwined on the left breast. However, there was an immediate problem. When the strips were washed, the black bled into the beige. The directors couldn't afford to keep buying new strips every time the colours ran so they decided to change their colours. They swapped the beige for white.