El Invierno Azul, 1990-1996

Lore & Background

Cruz Azul was founded in 1927 in Jasso, Hidalgo, by workers of the cement cooperative Cooperativa La Cruz Azul. The club relocated to Mexico City in 1971. It has never been relegated from the top flight and is one of only seven Mexican clubs to achieve this. Domestically, the club has won ten league titles, four Copa MX, four Campeón de Campeones, and holds the joint-record with one Supercopa de la Liga MX and one Supercopa MX. Internationally, with seven titles, the club holds the joint-record for the most successful club in the history of the CONCACAF Champions Cup/Champions League. Cruz Azul also holds the record for the most league runner-up finishes (12) and was the first CONCACAF club to reach the final of the Copa Libertadores. The club achieved a continental treble in the 1968–69 season, becoming the first CONCACAF club and third worldwide to accomplish this feat, and later the first club worldwide to win the continental treble twice.

In Their Own Story

The floodlights at Estadio Azul hummed like a factory at shift-change. It was February, and the air off the pitch carried the smell of wet concrete and cheap coffee from the vendor carts in the lower stands. A man in a faded blue jersey — the same one he'd worn since 1984, the collar soft as cloth — pressed his forehead against the cold railing of the upper tier and watched the ball roll. Around him, ten thousand voices were a single low chord, the sound of people who had rehearsed disappointment so many times it had become a kind of music. Then the striker, number eleven, slotted it past the keeper with the unglamorous certainty of a man closing a shop at the end of a long day. The chord broke. The chord became a roar. The man in the faded jersey did not jump. He simply exhaled, a long, shuddering breath that seemed to carry twenty years of held air, and for a moment the blue floodlights looked less like stadium lighting and more like the first pale light of a morning he had not expected to see.

Reader's Guide

The source article does not provide specific information about the period 1990–1996 or any league title won in that timeframe. The source states the club has won ten league titles overall but does not list the years of those titles. Therefore, no specific league title can be attributed to the 1990–1996 period based on the source.

Did You Know?

• Cruz Azul was founded in 1927 in Jasso, Hidalgo, as Club Deportivo, Social y Cultural Cruz Azul, A.C.
• The club relocated to Mexico City in 1971.
• Cruz Azul is one of only seven Mexican clubs to have never been relegated from the top flight.
• The club holds the joint-record for the most CONCACAF Champions Cup/Champions League titles with seven.
• Cruz Azul was the first CONCACAF club to reach the final of the Copa Libertadores.