Club Deportivo El Nacional
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The Club Deportivo El Nacional is a professional football (soccer) team from Quito, the capital of Ecuador in northwestern South America. Nacional is called so because it belongs to the Ecuadorian military and because only players with Ecuadorian nationality are allowed to play on the team. This is why the team is nicknamed Puros Criollos ("All-Creoles") or El Equipo Militar ("The Military Team"). The three colors of the team, which are red, light blue and dark blue, represent the three branches of the Ecuadorian military. The team logo has as a third color yellow instead of light blue. The home-team uniform is bright-red with light- and dark-blue designs, and the away uniform is usually gray.
On South American competitions, the team is usually called El Nacional, with the Spanish definite article el, instead of Nacional, without, to distinguish it from another team also called Nacional, which is the Club Nacional de Football from Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. For these reasons, the two teams are also called Nacional de Quito and Nacional de Montevideo.
Nacional is the team with the second-largest number of Ecuadorian championships, behind Barcelona Sporting Club from Guayaquil. Famous players to play with the team are forwards Ángel Fernández, Agustín Delgado, and Eduardo Hurtado, who is well-known for playing on U.S. Major League Soccer teams like the Los Angeles Galaxy and the MetroStars.
Nacional has three first-division rivals in Quito, which are the Sociedad Deportiva Aucas from the south of the city, and Liga Deportiva Universitaria and the Sociedad Deportivo Quito from the north. A fifth team, which belongs to the Ecuadorian police academy (EScuela Superior de POLIcía or ESPOLI), and which is called Club Deportivo ESPOLI, moved to the city of Cayambe, about two hours north of Quito.
The farthest round the team has reached in the South American championship, the Copa Libertadores, are the quarterfinals.
The team plays in Quito in the Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa, at an altitude of about 2,800 meters, but practices outside the city.
Honors
- Champions in: 1967, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1992, 1996, 2005 (Clausura)
External link
| Campeonato Ecuatoriano de Fútbol 2006 |
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| Aucas | Barcelona S.C. | Deportivo Cuenca | Deportivo Quito | Emelec | Espoli | Liga de Quito (L.D.U.) | Macará | Nacional | Olmedo [http://encycl.opentopia.com/ edit] |
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