El Dorado (soccer)

El Dorado was a period of the professional soccer championship in Colombia between 1949 and 1953, in which important international soccer figures played, mainly South American stars in a very high proportion, who did not it had been seen until then on Colombian soil.

The immediate origin is from the year 1948, when the Unionized Argentine Soccer Players confronted the Government of General Juan Domingo Perón and started a strike for the Argentine championship demanding better pay and working conditions, alleging the great disparity between the profits of the clubs and what was actually received by the players. Initially poorly received by the Argentine government, the strike caused the migration of several of Argentina's most important soccer figures to foreign leagues, especially the nascent Colombian professional soccer.

History

In 1948, a national soccer championship had already been played in Colombia, winning the Independiente Santa Fe title, coached by the Peruvian Carlos Carrillo Nalda. However, Dimayor, organizer of the professional tournament, entered into a dispute with the Colombian Football Federation that same year, generating a division within the Colombian football environment due to the conflict between clubs and national leaders. In response, FIFA expelled Colombia from its midst, while the national soccer tournament could not be left out of the control of the Colombian Soccer Federation. A first consequence of the disaffiliation was that Dimayor was freed from all control over the bonuses and salaries of the players, being able to even not pay commissions for foreign player passes.

In 1949 the Millonarios coach, the Argentine Carlos Aldabe, traveled to Buenos Aires to seek reinforcements taking advantage of the strike, which marked the arrival of prominent Argentine soccer players such as Adolfo Pedernera, former River Plate player, idol of the Argentine national team, and one of the best players in the world in the 1940s, which caused a stir in the country. After a few months in Colombia, Pedernera traveled to his homeland and returned with Néstor Raúl Rossi and the young Alfredo Di Stéfano, making Millonarios one of the best teams in the history of Colombian soccer, the Peruvian Alfredo Mosquera also played in attack. That year Millonarios was champion of the tournament, which aroused interest in the other teams to hire players from Argentina and other parts of the continent. The Colombian peso had great economic strength in those years and allowed Colombian clubs to pay higher bonuses and salaries than those of other South American countries, so Dimayor took advantage of the free migration of players to hire them without paying any commission to the clubs. foreigners of origin, which caused complaints to FIFA by the federations of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

As a consequence, other Colombian clubs hired foreign players, especially Peruvians. Forward Valeriano López was the Peruvian flagship of Deportivo Cali, where along with other prominent soccer players from his country he formed the so-called Black Roller, Independiente Medellín formed a team that had twelve Peruvians on its roster, some of them winners in the Argentine soccer like Roberto "Tito" Drago and Segundo "Titina" Castillo, who was called the Dance of the Sun for the splendor of his game. In 1950, Junior from Barranquilla hired Brazilian stars like Tim and Heleno de Freitas, and in 1952 incorporated a quota of Hungarian players (Wladislaw Zsoke, Imre Danko, Béla Sárosi and Fernes Neyrs).

In 1950, Hernando Lara Hernández, one of the founders of Cúcuta Deportivo, imported more than twelve players from Uruguay to form the club's first professional team, which some called the Uruguayan team. Some of these players were Julio Terra, Alcides Mañay, Juan José Tulic, Dardo Acuña, Lauro Rodríguez, Washington Barrios, Luis Alberto Miloc (the first reference the fans had), Carlos Zunino, Abraham González, Ramón Villaverde, Julio Ulises Terra, Juan Deluca and Juan Carlos Toja, the Mariscal. In 1951, the Uruguayan world champions of 1950, Schubert Gambetta and Eusebio Tejera, joined Cúcuta Deportivo, as well as Antonio Sacco and Bibiano Zapirain, who came from Inter Milan and Nacional. However, it was Deportes Caldas, with the Lithuanian goalkeeper Víctor Kriscuonas Vitatutas, the only one who could face Millonarios by taking the 1950 title.

At the end of 1950, Emilio Reuben formed a team of Argentines called Rosario Wanders, with the intention of holding exhibition matches and thus selling players to the Colombian league teams. Messrs. Josué Moreno Jaramillo, Aristóbulo Gómez, Julián Velásquez, Ancízar López, Nepomuceno Jaramillo, and Andrés Giraldo, studied the possibility of hiring some players who would initially be part of the team. After several talks with Reuben, the negotiation was finalized and they confirmed that the entire team would stay in Armenia, it would be called Deportes Quindío and it would play its matches at the San José stadium.

For its part, the Millionaires club, thanks to its stars, was called the Blue Ballet and won the titles of 1949, 1951, 1952 and 1953. In its ranks were, apart from Pedernera, Di Stéfano and Rossi, the Peruvian Ismael Soria, the Argentine goalkeeper Julio Cozzi, his compatriot Antonio Báez and the Uruguayan Raúl Pini.

Championships

The Pact of Lima

FIFA had expelled Colombia from its status as an affiliated country, accusing it of maintaining a pirate league. But the situation for everyone involved was difficult: foreign players in Colombia had problems emigrating to another league, and Colombian teams were unable to participate in FIFA competitions. After several leadership meetings between Colombian and foreign representatives, the conflict was resolved through the Pact of Lima in 1951, which guaranteed the return of Colombia to the governing body of world soccer under the condition that international players in Colombia return to their leagues. of origin in 1954. But without the Colombian clubs having to pay compensation to foreign clubs.

With the hiring of Di Stéfano by Real Madrid in 1953, a historic period in Colombian soccer officially ended, in which for the first time a team from that country defeated the best clubs in the world, and where the fans Colombiana was able to appreciate -for the first time in its domestic league- many great soccer stars of the time. However, for several years, the training of local soccer talent was almost abandoned, causing this a problem that Colombian clubs would face for several years.