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Football in
Nicaragua
Significance and
Teams
In Nicaragua, fútbol (Nicaraguan word for “football”) is not the
sport that catches everybody’s attention. The two main reasons why
this happens are given by: 1) the national and extensively acclaimed
sport here is baseball (just think about the internationally known
Porfi Altamirano or Dennis Martinez, the Nicaraguans’ most
celebrated baseball players); 2) there is not a single football team
in Nicaragua who has been able to attain international prominence in
this field where other Latin America countries outperform their
finest accomplishments.
However, although not ranging along with other countries,
Nicaragua’s football teams manage to a certain extent to remain
pretty popular among the people; not as popular as baseball teams,
yet they manage to maintain fairly high in the top sport preferences
of these people, together with sports such as volleyball, basketball
and cycling.
At the national level, Nicaragua has its own top soccer (football)
division. Its name in Spanish is Primera División de Nicaragua,
first started in 1933. Therefore, football has reached a pretty
mature age in this country, yet at the level of worldwide excellence
it still remains in its formative years. This does not mean that the
Nicaraguan football teams have never competed with international
rivals for qualifications in truly significant international
matches.
It is just that they did not manage to qualify,
in spite of the fact that they tried their best. They did that even
prior to 1933, when Nicaragua’s national team played against El
Salvador. The match was held in 1929, it was the very first match of
Nicaragua against another country’s representative team.
The game ended with a crushing 9-0 in favor of El
Salvador, marking the first of Nicaragua’s line of many defeats that
were to follow. Probably the worst defeat they suffered was in the
match against Brazil, in 1975, when an incredible and shameful 14-0
in favor of Brazil ended a disastrous performance on the field of
the Nicaraguan players.
Also, Nicaragua does have a National Federation of Football, which
manages the national team of the country ever since the Primera
División has been started (1933). This is the Federación
Nicaragüense de Fútbol, which decides on the organization of the
team and supervises its performances. Nonetheless, Nicaragua’s
football team remains among the most “anemic”, inoperative teams in
Central America.
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