Month: May 2024

First Division. 14 teams, one relegated and simple league formula without final stage or any other complications.
Huracan Buceo finished last with 10 points and was relegated. Standing from left: Jorge González, Blas A. Romero, Gerald Britos, Heber Pais, ?, Da Silva. First row: Julio Zoppi, Gustavo Badell, Oscar Quagliatta, ?, Washington Silva.
River Plate – 13th with 19 points.
Cerro – 12th with 21 points.
Progreso – 11th with 22 points. The 1989 champions were now down the table… not unexpected, really. Perhaps playing on two fronts – domestic and Copa Libertadores – was too much for a modest team without stars.
Wanderers – 10th with 23 points.
Rentistas – 9th with 24 points. They were the team with most draws in the championship – 14 outs of 26 games played. Second row from left: José Rey, Enrique Debéllis, Julio Lancieri, Richard Acuña, Carlos Torales, Miguel Santos. Front: Víctor Rodríguez, José Chileli, Daniel Larumbe, Juan Lombardi, Alejandro Garay.
Defensor Sporting – 8th with 27 points. Top row from left: Ruben Silva, Marcelo Tejera, Guillermo Almada, Claudio Arbiza, H. Silva Cantera, Mario Gastán. Crouching: José Chilelli, José González, Héctor Rodríguez, William Gutiérrez, Peter Méndez.
Liverpool – 7th with 29 points.
Danubio – 6th with 29 points.
Racing – 5th with 29 points.
Central Espanol – 4th with 29 points. Second row from left: Pablo Fuentes, Marcelo Paolino, Ruben Dos Santos, Andrés Silva, Fabián Tejera, Marcelo Fracchia. Front: Luis Chabat, Gustavo Ferreira, Gustavo Sarli, Enzo Azambuja, Alfredo Nocetti.
Penarol – 3rd with 31 points.
Nacional – 2nd with 32 points. Standing from left: Mozzo, Peña, Sere, Cardaccio, Milton Gomez, Carlos Favier Soca. First row: Tony Gomez, Julio Cesar Dely Valdez, Moran, W. Gutierrez, Venancio Ramos.
Bella Vista triumphed with the title after very strong season: 16 wins, 7 ties, 3 losses, 34-15 goal-difference and 39 points. They left Nacional 7 points behind! Excellent season and fantastic ending: Bella Vista not only never won a title before, but nobody ever expected them to win a title – they were modest club by all means, nothing in their tradition suggested such success. And with such a margin – beating occasionally Nacional and Penarol was rare achievement to brag about for years, but to leave them in the dust was fantastic. Well deserved victory, no doubt about it, and one more name was added to the short list of clubs having won the Uruguayan title. They also contributed to the great period of the small clubs: for a fourth year now the champion was neither Nacional, nor Penarol, the title going from smallish to smaller clubs, from Defensor Sporting in 1987 to Danubio the next year, to Progreso in 1989 and now to Bella Vista. As for the squad, the new champions were anonymous just like those before them – a nice success of determined team, but also betraying the general weakness of the big clubs: by now practically all good Uruguayan players played football abroad, even Nacional and Penarol had no worthy starts – just look at their squads: the only recognizable name was the import Dely Valdez, himself not from a country known for great football and players. Thus, the underdogs got their chance.
First time and rare one at that more than deserves a second photo: here they are the 1990 champions of Uruguay Bella Vista. Instant legend for the club’s supporters, who knew quite well that a second title would be… impossible.
One more look then at heroic Bella Vista.

Uruguay. Second Division. 10 teams in it, one going down relegated and one up promoted. Small and short championship, which was somewhat enlarged by final tournament between the to 3 teams carrying their regular season points. In theory, that tournament was to cap the season and decided the winner, but it was left unfinished due to… irrelevance. All participants were still from Montevideo -and since the III Division was also from Montevideo – Huracan (barrio Paso de la Arena) – the Uruguayan top leagues were and going to be practically Montevideo championships. So this Huracan (not to be confused with Huracan Buceo) was promoted for 1991.
Fenix finished last with 11 points and was relegated to III Division. Rampla Juniors ended 9th with 13 points. Villa Espanola – 8th with 15 points. Deportivo Italiano – 7th with 15 points. Cerrito – 6th with 16 points.
Miramar Misiones – 5th with 18 points. Standing from left: Romero, Néstor Goñez, Santiago Kalemkerián, Darlyn Gayol, Héctor Cedrés, Juan Tejera. Crouching: Oscar Suárez, Pablo Guidi, Fierro, Varela, Etcheverry.
Colon – 4th with 19 points. Second row from left: ?, Aldo Beninca, Ruben Alzueta, Ruben Baeque, Richard Graña, Alvaro Albacete. Front: E. Vega, Hugo R. Guerra, Marcelo Ferreira, Marcelo Morán, Alberto Correa.
Basanez – 3rd with 23 points. A curious record they had: lost only 1 match, tied 11 out of 18 total, won 6.
Sud America – 2nd with 24 points.
El Tanque Sisley – 1st with 26 points.
The top 3 teams went to play in a mini-tournament between themselves for the top position – theoretically, every team had a chance to be champion, but… the final was left uncompleted. El Tanque Sisley won over Sud America 2-1 and then Sud America canceled the hopes of Basanez beating them 4-1. There was no chance for change of positions, since the points from the regular season were carried on and the last match between El Tanque Sisley and Basanez became irrelevant and not played.
El Tanque Sisley was the II Division champion and promoted to First Division. Excellent achievement for a club rarely playing top league football. Top row from left: Jorge Benítez (K), Heber Bentancur (U), Washington Castelnoble, Pablo Alonso, Gerardo Pilas, Ernesto Ledesma (AC), Richard Cardozo, Ruben De León, Abel Tolosa, Freddy Pintos, Ricardo Ortiz (E).
Middle row: Roberto Castro (PF), Daniel García, Juan Sadukián, Leonardo Peralta, Daniel Hernández, Gaspar Velázquez, Alejandro Acevedo.
Front row: Jorge Palermo, Miguel Peirano, Aldo Azzinari, Eduardo Rinaldi, Néstor Fernández, Daniel Fascioli.

First Division. Standard league championship with only one unusual element: the semi-finalists and the losing finalist of Copa Chile got 1 extra point added to their records and the winner – 2 points added. The last two teams were relegated, the 13th and the 14th in the final table went to promotion/relegation plaay-off against the second finishers in the Second Division zones. The champion qualified to Copa Libertadores and the second Chilean team was decided in a 4-team tournament between qualified teams placed 2nd to 5th in the final table – although it is not clear why the 5th (Palestino) was out of it and the 6th Deportes Concepcion qualified instead. The championship was dominated by Colo-Colo.
Huachipato ended last with 21 points and went down.
Deportes Iquique – 15th with 24 points and relegated.
Everton – 14th with 24 points. Escaped direct relegation on better goal-difference – by one goal – but still threatened with relegation: going to promotion/relegation play-off.
Naval (Talcahuano) – 13th with 25 points and going to promotion/relegation play-off.
Santiago Wanderers – 12th with 26 points.
Universidad de Chile – 11th with 26 points.
Fernandez Vial – 10th with 27 points.
Cobresal – 9th with 29 points.
Deportes La Serena – 8th with 30 points.
Cobreloa – 7th with 31 points.
Deportes Concepcion – 6th with 33 points.
Palestino – 5th with 33 points.
O’Higgins – 4th with 35 points (1 point added as Copa Chile semi-finalists).
Union Espanola – 3rd with 37 points (1 point added as Copa Chile semi-finalists).
Universidad Catolica – 2nd with 38 points (1 point added as Copa Chile semi-finalists).
Colo-Colo won the championship comfortably with 46 points. 2 points were added to their record because they won Copa Chile as well, but even additional points they had significant lead. 17 wins, 10 ties, only 3 lost games, 60-22 goal-difference. Universidad Catolica scored 4 goals more than the champions, but in defensive matters Colo-Colo had no rival – they allowed only 22 goals in their net (Universidad Catolica permitted 41). Second row from left: Jaime Pizarro, Ruben Espinoza, Javier Margas, Eduardo Vilches, Lizardo Garrido, Jose Daniel Moron. Front row: Marcelo Barticciotto, Ricardo Dabrowski, Ruben Martinez, Sergio Diaz, Raul Ormeño. Not widely known names here, but no doubt very strong by Chilean standards at the time.
By itself, nothing strange Colo-Colo dominated the championship and collected one more title, so perhaps for the moment trivia catches attention more than anything else: Soviet automotive manufacturer Lada sponsored Colo-Colo
and the captain sported the German flag on his armband. Signs of the time. Trivia is trivia, but this squad was going to make itself well known far beyond Chile very soon.