Cerro Porteño

Cerro Porteño
	logo
Full name	Club Cerro Porteño
Nickname(s)	Azulgrana, El Ciclón. el club del pueblo and la mitad mas uno
Founded	October 1, 1912
Ground	General Pablo Rojas,; Asunción, Paraguay
Capacity	25,000
Chairman	Juan José Zapag
Manager	Pedro Troglio
League	Primera División
Clausura 2009	6º
Home colours	Away colours

Club Cerro Porteño is a traditional Paraguayan football team, based in the neighbourhood of Barrio Obrero in Asunción. The club was founded in 1912 and won 28 Primera División titles.

They play their home games at the General Pablo Rojas Stadium, also known as "La Olla" (the Boiler). Cerro Porteño plays in a red and blue shirts.

It is the team that played more Copa Libertadores games without ever having won the tournament.

History

Cerro Porteño was founded in October 1, 1912 by Susana Núñez, along with a group of young people excited to create a new football club. At that time Paraguay was living a tense situation with instability in the government caused by the fervent rivalries between the two leading political parties: Partido Colorado (Colorado Party) and Partido Liberal (Liberal Party). Because of the tensions, the founders of the club decided to use the colors of the rival parties, red and blue, as the team official colors (red being the color of the Colorado Party and blue of the Liberal Party) as a symbol of unity and friendship between Paraguayans. Later, white was used on the shorts to complete the Paraguayan flag colours.

It owes its name to the battle fought between the forces of Buenos Aires, Argentina (“the Porteños”) and the Paraguayan army, in the neighbourhood of the “Cerro Mbaé” (Mbaé Hill) - named after that battle as the Cerro Porteño (Porteño Hill) - on January 19, 1811. During that battle, the troops of Paraguay (at that time a Spanish colony) were abandoned by the Spanish Governor but continued to be led by the Paraguayan officials, who headed the great victory against the Porteños troops. That battle is known as the "Battle of Cerro Porteño" and is one of the greatest military victories of Paraguay.

Cerro Porteño is known in Paraguay as "el club del pueblo" (the common people's club) because most of the fans are from working and/or lower social classes, as opposed to the fans from rival club Olimpia whose fans are usually from upper classes. Because of this, it is said that Cerro Porteño has the biggest number of supporters in Paraguay.

Throughout the years, Cerro Porteño won a significant number of national championships, establishing it as a respected and traditional Paraguayan football club. However, to date, it has not won any international tournaments despite a few good runs in the Copa Libertadores, for instance in 1973, 1978, 1993, 1998 and 1999, in which the team reached the semi-finals stage.

Osvaldo Ardiles joined the club as manager in May 2008 ^[1] but was sacked in August of the same year after a string of poor results and was replaced by Pedro Troglio^[2]

Why is it called "Ciclon"?

In 1918, there was equal score, so it had to contest a final match between Cerro Porteno and Nacional. The first game ended 2-2, the second 1-1 and the third and defining, Cerro Porteno was losing 2-0 with 7 minutes remaining to complete the comparison, the public cerrista began to withdraw. At 40 minutes, then pulled one comes three consecutive victories and a 4-2 win from there was born the nickname of The Cyclone which was enhanced by being the club's nickname.

Stadium

The club stadium is officially called Cerro Porteno General Pablo Rojas, after the club president who was the main proponent of the work, but is better known as "La Olla Azulgrana. It has a capacity for 32,000 spectators.This stadium was supposed to be bigger than it originally is, but because of insufficient founds the stadium was finished without the original plan of it.

Honours

National honours

Paraguayan First Division
- Winners (28): 1913, 1915, 1918, 1919, 1935, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1944, 1950, 1954, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2009-A
Torneo República
- Winners (2): 1991, 1995

International honours

Copa Libertadores: 32 appearances
- Semifinalist (5): 1973, 1978, 1993, 1998, 1999,
Copa Sudamericana: 4 appearances
- Round of 16 (1): 2005
- Quarterfinalist (1): 2004
- Semifinalist (1): 2009

Former players

Paraguay

Argentina

Bolivia

Lorgio Álvarez

Brazil

Cameroon

Colombia

Faryd Aly Mondragón

Notable coaches

Current first team squad

As of August 23, 2009.

First Squad

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.


No.	Pos.	Nation	Player
1	GK	ARG	Ezequiel Medrán
2	DF	PAR	Julio Irrazábal
3	DF	PAR	Fidel Pérez
4	DF	ARG	Diego Herner
5	DF	PAR	Iván Piris
6	MF	PAR	Jorge Brítez
7	FW	PAR	César Ramírez
8	MF	PAR	Luis Cáceres
9	FW	PAR	Pablo Zeballos
10	MF	PAR	Julio Dos Santos
11	MF	PAR	Ernesto Cristaldo
12	GK	PAR	Diego Barreto
13	DF	PAR	Davíd Mendoza
14	MF	ARG	Javier Villarreal


No.	Pos.	Nation	Player
15	DF	PAR	Luis Cardozo
16	MF	PAR	Jorge Daniel Núñez
17	DF	ARG	Miguel Torrén
18	MF	PAR	Carlos Recalde
19	FW	ARG	Roberto Nanni
20	FW	PAR	Ramon Cardozo
21	FW	ARG	Sebastian Ereros
22	FW	PAR	Iván Emmanuel Gonzalez
24	MF	PAR	Rodrigo Burgos
30	MF	PAR	Jose Arrua

Reserve squad

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.


No.	Pos.	Nation	Player
25	GK	PAR	Paolo Ortíz
37	GK	PAR	Martin Cabrera
31	DF	PAR	Cesar Benitez
34	DF	PAR	Rodrigo Nicolo Roman
35	DF	PAR	Maximo Aguero
29	MF	PAR	Iván Torres
32	MF	PAR	Jorge Baez
26	MF	PAR	Óscar Gamarra