📸 Club Nacional, Uruguay football club: Photo Gallery (Photo: 17)

Club Nacional de Football is a Uruguayan sports institution, founded on May 14, 1899, in Montevideo by a group of young students with the aim of creating a football club for local Uruguayan players in response to the dominance of foreign European clubs and athletes, particularly English and German. For this reason, it is regarded as the “first local team” in the country and one of the first clubs in the Americas founded by nationals.

Although Nacional later grew into a multi-sport institution, football has always been its greatest source of success, making it one of the most decorated and recognized clubs in the world at both national and international levels. Known as the “Dean” of Uruguayan football, Nacional has competed in the country’s top division continuously since its debut in 1901 and has won 49 Uruguayan Championship titles, in addition to finishing first in the incomplete 1925 and 1948 tournaments. In total, the club holds 163 official titles, 144 domestic and 19 international, making it the most decorated club in Uruguay and one of the most successful worldwide.

At the international level, Nacional has won the Copa Libertadores three times (1971, 1980, and 1988), defeating Estudiantes de La Plata, Internacional, and Newell’s Old Boys in those respective finals. Each of these victories qualified Nacional for the Intercontinental Cup, where Nacional also became a rare three-time world champion, winning in 1971, 1980, and 1988 against Panathinaikos, Nottingham Forest, and PSV Eindhoven. The club also holds a Recopa Sudamericana title (1989) and is the only Uruguayan team to have won the Copa Interamericana, in 1971 and 1988. For much of the 20th century, Nacional was the club with the most international titles in the world until it was surpassed in the early 21st century by Real Madrid and Al-Ahly.

Identified with the colors white, blue, and red — drawn from the Artigas Flag — Nacional plays its home matches at the Estadio Gran Parque Central, located in the La Blanqueada neighborhood of Montevideo. The stadium is historically significant, as it hosted one of the opening matches of the inaugural 1930 FIFA World Cup, featuring Belgium and the United States, and saw the World Cup debuts of Argentina and Brazil. It also served as the sole venue for the 1923 and 1924 editions of the Copa América.

Nacional’s greatest rival is Peñarol, in what is considered the oldest football rivalry outside the British Isles and one of the most important derbies in the world. Matches between Nacional and Peñarol have been ranked among the three most exciting football derbies globally by the British magazine FourFourTwo..