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Club Deportivo El Nacional
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, to distinguish it from Nacional, the Club Nacional de Football from Montevideo, Uruguay. The two teams are also referred to as Nacional de Quito and Nacional de Montevideo.
El Nacional is the team with the largest number of Ecuadorian championships (13), sharing this distinction with Barcelona Sporting Club from Guayaquil. Famous players to play or have played for the team include forwards Angel Fernandez, Agustin Delgado, and Eduardo Hurtado, who is also well-known for playing in the U.S. Major League Soccer for 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 POLIcia or ESPOLI), and which is called Club Deportivo ESPOLI, moved to the city of Latacunga, about two hours south of Quito.
The farthest round the team has reached in the South American championship, the Copa Libertadores, is the semifinal.
The team plays in Quito in the Estadio Olimpico Atahualpa, at an altitude of about 2,800 meters, but practices outside the city.
Achievements
Campeonato Ecuatoriano de Futbol
*Champion (13): 1967, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1992, 1996, 2005-C, 2006.
International Honors
Copa conmebol Semifinalist:(1)1992
Copa Libertadores Semifinalist:(1)1985
Copa Merconorte Semifinalist:(1)1998
Notable Players
Jose Villafuerte
Current Squad
As of August 10 2007
External links
Official Site
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Club Deportivo El Nacional
