Era 2010-2019

Lore & Background

Founded in 1906 as Unión Football Club, the club changed its name to Guadalajara Football Club in 1908, and then changed to its current name in 1923. Nicknamed Chivas, it was one of ten founding members of the first professional and national league in Mexico, named Liga Mayor (current Liga MX). Guadalajara is one of seven Mexican clubs that have never been relegated. Chivas is the only football club in Mexico that does not sign foreign or naturalized players unless they are of Mexican descent. The team has historically relied on home-grown (cantera) players and has been the launching pad of many internationally successful players, including Javier Hernández, Carlos Vela and Carlos Salcido, among others.

In Their Own Story

The floodlights at the Estadio Akron hummed to life on a humid October evening, and the Chivería rose as one—a sea of red and white, scarves snapping, drums pounding a rhythm that had no beginning and no end. The ball was in the air, a long diagonal from the left-back, and the centre-forward, a kid from Tlaquepaque who had been at the club since he was thirteen, rose above the defender with that particular Chivas hunger, the kind you cannot teach in a training ground. The net rippled. The stadium detonated. Somewhere in the stands, a grandmother who had been coming to this ground since 1974 pressed her hand to her chest and whispered a name she had carried for forty years. The manager in the technical area simply closed his eyes, let out a breath he had been holding for ninety minutes, and did not smile. He did not need to. The smile was already on ten thousand faces around him, and it belonged to all of them.

Reader's Guide

Domestically, CD Guadalajara is one of the most successful Mexican clubs, winning twelve Liga MX titles, four Copa MX titles, seven Campeón de Campeones and one Supercopa MX, and also holds the league record for the longest winning streak at the beginning of a season, with eight consecutive wins in the Bicentenario 2010. Internationally, it has won two CONCACAF Champions Cup/Champions League titles, and also finished as runners-up in the 2010 Copa Libertadores. According to a study of preferred football clubs in 2016, Guadalajara was the most popular Mexican club, with 44.2% of supporters in the country. In 2020, Forbes estimated that the club was the most valuable of the league, ranking sixth overall in the Americas, worth approximately $311.5 million.

Did You Know?

• Guadalajara won its first professional league championship in 1956, with a last-minute header scored by Salvador Reyes.
• The team was nicknamed 'Chivas Locas' (Crazy Goats) during a 1948–49 game against Tampico, initially as an insult but later adopted as the team's nickname.
• El Campeonísimo was the only team in Mexico's football history to win four league championships in a row, during the 1958–59, 1959–60, 1960–61, and 1961–62 seasons.
• In 1964, El Campeonísimo played several matches in Europe against teams such as FC Barcelona, Werder Bremen, and Lille Olympique.