CD Olmedo

CD Olmedo
	CD Olmedo
Basic data
Surname	Centro Deportivo Olmedo
Seat	Riobamba
founding	1919
president	Mayra Arguello
Website	centrodeportivoolmedo.com
First soccer team
Head coach	Vicente Girona
Venue	Estadio Olímpico de Riobamba
Places	14,400
league	Series A
2018	4th place (Serie B, promotion)
home	Away

Centro Deportivo Olmedo is an Ecuadorian football club from Riobamba . The club was founded in 1919 and plays its home games at the Estadio Olímpico de Riobamba , which can seat 14,400 spectators. CD Olmedo has been the football champion of Ecuador once, in 2000, and currently plays in Serie A , the country's top division.

history

The CD Olmedo association was founded on November 11, 1919. This makes it the oldest club currently in the two top divisions of Ecuadorian football. But despite its old age, the club can only have a relatively limited number of titles. However, this fact is due to the fact that football in Ecuador has been dominated by teams from the capital Quito and Guayaquil since the introduction of a uniform national championship in 1957 . Olmedo, on the other hand, which is based in Riobamba , the capital of the Chimborazo province in the center of Ecuador with a good 120,000 inhabitants, had to be content for a long time with activity in the second or third football league of Ecuador.

After promotion to the first division was achieved in 1994, however, the club managed to establish itself in this. Six years later, in 2000, the team of the Argentine coach Julio Asad advanced to the surprise team of the Ecuadorian Serie A and won the championship of the small South American country with three points ahead of CD El Nacional . This made Olmedo the first club outside of Quito and Guayaquil to succeed. Four years later, Deportivo Cuenca also made it ; To date, Olmedo and Deportivo Cuenca are the only two teams outside of the two football capitals to win the championship of Ecuador.

With the championship triumph in 2000, Olmedo was also eligible to compete in the 2001 Copa Libertadores . In the group stage Group 7, however, they finished only last behind CD Cruz Azul from Mexico , AD São Caetano from Brazil and Defensor Sporting from Uruguay and were eliminated. The following year they were again qualified for the Copa Libertadores and even surprisingly survived the group stage as second in Group 4 behind América de Cali from Colombia , but ahead of Club Bolívar from Bolivia and the Brazilian representative Athletico Paranaense . However, they were relatively clearly defeated in the second round by the Mexican team from Monarcas Morelia , where the first leg in Riobamba was clearly lost 5-0. Finally, they also lost 3-2 in Mexico and were eliminated.

However, parallel to the most successful Copa Libertadores season in the club's history, relegation to the second division followed on a national level only two years after the championship. In the following year, however, succeeded in the championship in Serie B and with it the direct promotion. In 2005 and 2008 they took part in the Copa Libertadores two more times, but were eliminated in the group phase and qualification. Also in the Copa Sudamericana 2007 came the end early.

The CD Olmedo team had to play in the second Ecuadorian football league in 2013 after being relegated bottom of the table in Serie A in 2012. The club managed to get promoted again as champions and played in the first division again in the 2014 season. There Olmedo could not keep the class and was relegated again to the second division. In the 2018 season, Olmedo was able to rise again to the top division.