Colombia W

Early history (1900–1946)

The origins of football in Colombia are disputed, as no single city or date is universally accepted. Most accounts place the first organised matches in the early 20th century on the Caribbean coast, particularly around Barranquilla and Santa Marta, where British railway workers on the Puerto Colombia line and English sailors introduced association football to local communities. Bogotá and Pasto have also laid claim to the sport's introduction, and among the earliest documented fixtures is an October 1909 friendly in Santa Marta between a United Fruit Company works team fielding English players and a side of local labourers. One documented account places the first match on 6 August 1904, when executives and workers of The Colombia Railways Company played in Barranquilla, following informal games organised by employees since around 1900.

Colombian football's first governing body was founded in Barranquilla on 12 October 1924 as the Liga de Football del Atlántico, gaining legal recognition from the national government by resolution in 1927. Reconstituted as the Asociación Colombiana de Fútbol, it joined both FIFA and CONMEBOL in 1936, and adopted its present name, the Colombian Football Federation, upon receiving definitive FIFA recognition in 1971. Colombia's first recorded international match came on 17 February 1926, when a side representing the Atlantic coast and playing as Selección Atlántico defeated Costa Rica 4–1 at the Estadio Moderno Julio Torres in Barranquilla.

First representative teams (1937–1938)

In 1937, Colombia fielded a representative side at the Juegos del IV Centenario de Cali, a multi-sport event marking the 400th anniversary of Cali's founding, and played four matches against Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador and Cuba at the newly inaugurated Estadio Olímpico Pascual Guerrero. Despite FIFA membership, Colombia withdrew from the 1938 FIFA World Cup and instead entered the 1938 Central American and Caribbean Games in Panama City, where the national team played its first tournament matches. The squad was drawn in its entirety from Club Juventud Bogotana, a Bogotá side founded the previous year that lent all of its players to the selection and, on returning home, was reconstituted as the Club Municipal de Deportes and ultimately became Millonarios.

Colombia opened with a 3–1 defeat to Mexico on 10 February, then recorded a maiden tournament victory on 14 February by beating hosts Panama 4–2. Narrow losses to Costa Rica (1–2) and Venezuela (1–2) were offset by a 3–2 win over El Salvador, and Colombia beat the same opponents 2–1 in the third-place play-off on 25 February to claim the bronze medal. The side remained together on returning to Bogotá, competing at the 1938 Bolivarian Games in August, where it defeated Venezuela 2–0 but lost to Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.

First CONMEBOL and regional tournaments (1945–1946)

Colombia made their Copa América debut at the 1945 tournament in Chile, their first appearance in an official CONMEBOL competition. With no professional league or national selection system in place, the squad was built almost entirely around Junior de Barranquilla, then one of the strongest amateur sides on the Caribbean coast, and every player was registered simply as an amateur. Roberto Meléndez acted as player-manager, appearing on the wing while also selecting the side. Drawn against Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia, Colombia lost their first four matches but finished with a 3–1 win over Ecuador and a 3–3 draw with Bolivia to place fifth of seven.

Colombia withdrew from the 1946 South American Championship but won their first international title later that year at the football tournament of the 1946 Central American and Caribbean Games, staged in Barranquilla in December. After Cuba and Mexico withdrew, judging that the strength of the remaining entrants did not justify the cost of sending teams, the competition was played as a single round-robin; Colombia won all six matches, scoring 20 goals and conceding seven, defeating Curaçao, Venezuela, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Panama. The team was coached by Peruvian manager José Arana Cruz, one of the first foreign coaches in the Colombia setup, whose tenure coincided with the country's first major international success.

El Dorado and international isolation (1948–1957)

Colombian football turned professional in 1948 with the founding of the División Mayor del Fútbol Colombiano (DIMAYOR), a Bogotá-based body which organised a ten-club national championship in competition with Adefútbol, the FIFA-affiliated amateur association based in Barranquilla. When Adefútbol refused to sanction the breakaway, FIFA disaffiliated DIMAYOR, and the resulting suspension barred both Colombian clubs and the national team from all international competition for the period from 1949 to 1954 that became known as El Dorado.

Freed from the obligation to pay transfer fees, and coinciding with a players' strike that had halted the Argentine championship, Colombian clubs recruited aggressively abroad; by the end of 1949 some 109 foreign players, 57 of them Argentine, had joined the league. Millonarios assembled the side known as the Ballet Azul, built around Argentines Adolfo Pedernera, Alfredo Di Stéfano and Néstor Rossi, which won four championships in five seasons and beat Real Madrid 4–2 in Madrid on 30 March 1952 to win the Spanish club's golden jubilee tournament. The exodus prompted complaints of piracy from the Argentine federation, and FIFA formally expelled Colombia on 25 October 1951. Days later, at the CONMEBOL congress in Peru, DIMAYOR signed the Pacto de Lima, agreeing that all foreign players signed during the period would return to their original clubs by 15 October 1954 in exchange for readmission. The sanction was lifted in October 1954, ending an era in which the national team played no official fixtures at all despite the domestic league arguably being the strongest in the world.