|
Costa Rica is widely considered the rising star of the CONCACAF region, and rightly so.
Quickly warming to the game after its introduction by English industrialists and railroad engineers in the waning years of the 19th century, Costa Rica failed to distinguish itself initially as a force on the Central American scene.
The modern game was first played in the capital of San Jose in the late 1880s, and the game quickly spread in all directions, engulfing the entire nation.
The natives took to the game with aplomb, and in the early years of the 20th century semi-organized football clubs began to spring up along the length and breadth of the Central American nation.
The initial fascination with the game was hinged upon open, attacking flair, with goals aplenty, and those honest, forthright roots still stick with the Tico sides of today.
Seven Costa Rican clubs came together in 1901, and again in 1912, in a vain attempt to consolidate a loose federation of clubs into a national league. The attempts failed on both occasions, but they inspired a sense of urgency and drive in an increasingly football-mad nation.
In 1921 the country looked again to organize its nascent footballing fringes into a coherent unit. There was initial mistrust and political wrangling, but with persistence a national football league and a football federation (Federación Costarricense de Fútbol) were born under the presidency of José Albertazzi Avendaño.
Seven sides battled it out for the first Costa Rican national championship, with CS Herediano bringing home the inaugural hardware in 1921.
That same year, the newly born Costa Rican Federation was welcomed into FIFA’s international fold.
With the emergence of an organized league and a federation to oversee its progress, Costa Rica slowly began to turn enthusiasm for the game into technical ability and tactical awareness at the international level, and a series of regional honours followed.
The Ticos took home the Central American and Caribbean Cup in 1941, 1946, 1948, 1953, 1955, 1960 and 1961, and they won the CONCACAF championship in 1963 and 1969.
More recently, Costa Rica were crowned Central American champions in 1991, 1997 and 1999.
As the most colourful feather in the nation's footballing cap, and the final corroboration of a profound ascendancy, the Ticos reached their first-ever FIFA World Cup™ in Italy in 1990, where Hernan Medford scored a dramatic late goal to knock out Sweden and send the Ticos into the second round.
The seeds of that team grew into the 2002 edition, with Medford still an integral part of the side and Alexandre Guimaraes, a midfielder from the 1990 team, coaching the squad.
| 
