Soccer in Chile

The Santiago Wanderers' crew in 1907

The football in Chile developed by the arrival of English sailors in the port city of Valparaiso , 1892 with the Santiago Wanderers the oldest existing football club called into life in the country. The association named after Saint James has no connection to the capital Santiago de Chile , as one might assume based on the name. Rather, the founders decided on this name because the originally intended name Valparaíso Wanderers was documented by an already existing sports club.

Local tournaments

The first Magallanes championship team, 1933

The first Colo-Colo championship team, 1937

A few years after the founding of the Santiago Wanderers in 1897, Unión Española in Santiago de Chile and CD Magallanes in the suburb of Maipú, the two oldest clubs still in existence in the capital region.

In the early years of Chilean football, regional championship tournaments were only held in the port city of Valparaíso and the capital Santiago de Chile, and football only gradually spread across the country. The national professional league was introduced in 1933 and dominated in the first few years by CD Magallanes, which won the first three championships in a row. Its main competitor at that time was the Audax Italiano , founded in 1910 by Italian immigrants , which won the title for the first time in 1936 after two runner-up championships in 1934 and 1935. In 1937, today's record champion CSD Colo-Colo (31 titles), who emerged from a spin-off of CD Magallanes, won his first title. In the beginning, the derby between Colo-Colo and Magallanes (also known as Clásico Padre e Hijo , German classic father and son ) was the most important game in the country, but today the dispute between Colo-Colo and the CF Universidad de applies Chile (second most successful club in the country with 17 championship titles) as the "game of the year" in Chile ( El Clásico del fútbol chileno ).

Also in 1933 the first Chilean cup competition was launched, which was replaced in the 1950s by the Copa Chile , which is still held today .

A national second division was first played in 1935 and won by Santiago Morning in the inaugural season. This league received professional status in 1952.

Greatest successes in international football

societies

The greatest successes at club level achieved the CSD Colo-Colo in 1991 by winning the Copa Libertadores and in the following year by winning the Copa Interamericana and the Recopa Sudamericana . A success in the World Cup was failed, however, because the team (1991) lost 3-0 to FK Red Star Belgrade .

The CD Universidad Católica achieved further success at international level by winning the Copa Interamericana ( 1994 ) and the CF Universidad de Chile by winning the Copa Sudamericana ( 2011 ). The success of the Cato was only possible through the renouncement of the São Paulo FC , which had prevailed in the final of the Copa Libertadores 1993 and would actually have been eligible to compete .

National team

The Chilean national soccer team has so far participated in a soccer world championship nine times and achieved its best result at the soccer world championship held in its own country in 1962 , where it finished third after failing in the semifinals against eventual world champions Brazil .

The first four tournaments for the Copa America hosted by host Chile turned out to be less successful . In three of these four cases ( 1920 , 1941 and 1945 ) the team finished last, before a second place jumped out in the fifth event in their own country in 1955 . For the first time in 2015 at the seventh edition in their own country, the first ever tournament victory in the Copa America was achieved, which was defended in the United States the following year . In both finals, Chile faced its neighbor Argentina and was able to prevail in the subsequent penalty shoot-out after goalless encounters .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Football World Atlas (Copress, Munich 2001), ISBN 3-7679-0651-1 , p. 134
2. ↑ Places to see and things to do in Valparaiso: Artillery Passage to the Custom House (English; accessed July 17, 2016)
3. ↑ Chile - Liga Metropolitana (Santiago) 1903-1926 at RSSSF (English)
4. ↑ Chile - Final Tables at RSSSF (English)
5. ↑ Chile - List of Cup Winners and Runners Up at RSSSF (English)
6. ↑ Chile - List of Second Division Champions at RSSSF (English)