Cerro Porteño

Cerro Porteño
	logo
Full name	Club Cerro Porteño
Nickname(s)	Azulgrana and El Ciclón
Founded	October 1, 1912
Ground	General Pablo Rojas,; Asunción, Paraguay
Capacity	25,000
Chairman	Luis Alberto Pettengill
Manager	Gustavo Costas
League	Liga Paraguaya
Clausura 2006	1st
Home colours	Away colours

Club Cerro Porteño is a traditional Paraguayan football (soccer) team, based in the neighbourhood of Barrio Obrero in Asunción. The club was founded in 1912 and is the team to have played the largest amount of Copa Libertadores games without ever having won the tournament. It plays its home games at the General Pablo Rojas Stadium, also known as "La Olla" (the pot).

History

Cerro Porteño was founded in October 1, 1912 by Susana Núñez, along with a group of young people excited to create a new football club. At that time Paraguay was living a tense situation with instability in the government caused by the fervent rivalries between the two leading political parties: Partido Colorado (Colorado Party) and Partido Liberal (Liberal party). Because of the tensions, the founders of the club decided to use the colors of the rival parties, red and blue, as the team official colors (red being the color of the Colorado Party and blue of the Liberal Party) as a symbol of unity and friendship between Paraguayans. Later, white was on the shorts to complete the Paraguayan flag colours.

It owes its name to the battle freed among the forces of Buenos Aires, Argentina (“the Porteños”) and the Paraguayan Army, in the neighbourhood of the “Cerro Mbaé” (Mbaé Hill) - after that exploit baptized as the Cerro Porteño (Porteño Hill) - in January 19, 1811. During that battle, the troops of Paraguay (at that time a Spanish colony) were abandoned by the Spanish Governor, remaining in charge of the Paraguayan officials, who headed the great victory against the porteños troops. That battle is known as the "Battle of Cerro Porteño" and is one of the greatest military victories of Paraguay.

Cerro Porteño is known in Paraguay as "el club del pueblo" (the common people's club) because most of the fans are from working and/or lower social classes, as opposed to the fans from rival club Olimpia whose fans are usually from upper classes. Because of this, it is said that Cerro Porteño has the biggest number of supporters in Paraguay.

Throughout the years Cerro Porteño won a significant amount of national championships, establishing the club as a respected and traditional Paraguayan football behind Olimpia. However, to date it has not won any international tournaments despite a few good runs in the Copa Libertadores like in the years 1973, 1978, 1993, 1998 and 1999, in which the team reached the semi-finals stage.

Honours

National honours

Paraguayan First Division
- Winners (27): 1913, 1915, 1918, 1919, 1935, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1944, 1954, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2001, 2004, 2005