Costa Rica. 1990 was a great year for Costarican football – fantastic debut at the World Cup finals. The World Cup was the focus, so the championship was stopped for a long time and finished much later than usual. The success of the national team during the break very likely motivated the Federation to make changes for the next season – originally, one team was relegated from the 10-team top Division and one promoted from Second Division, but that was changed in the later stage of the championship – the top league was increased to 12 teams for the next season and the relegated team stayed plus one more team was promoted. On the other hand, there was no final of the championship and not all results managed to reach statistics. The championship was in two stages: first the normal league stage in which all teams played 3 times against the rest. The top 6 teams qualified to the second Hexagonal stage and the last was relegated. The winners of the first and second stage played the championship final – but if the same team won both stages there was no final for lack of opponent.
From second level AD Municipal Generalena was promotion. One more team was promoted by the end of the year.
AD Palmares ended last in the first stage of the championship with 16 points and was relegated. By the end of the year they were no longer relegated, because of the enlargement of First Division. AD Guanacasteca finished 9th. AD Municipal Puntarenas – 8th and AD San Carlos – 7th. For those teams the season ended early. The rest qualified to the second stage, but since no results and final table exist today one has to follow only the opening stage of the season: CS Cartagines was 6th.
CS Herediano – 5th.
AD Limonense – 4th.
CS Uruguay de Coronado – 3rd. Standing from left: William Mejía, Ronny Díaz, José Luis Guillén Gallardo, Carlos Vivó Quirós, Miguel Jasper Simpson Lacey, Rodolfo Jarret. Crouching : Juan Morales, Guillermo Guardia, ?, Franco Benavides, Ronald Salazar.
LD Alajuelense – 2nd.
CD Saprissa – 1st. Standing from left: Geovanny Ramírez, Alexis Camacho, Benjamín Mayorga, Geraldo Da Silva, Evaristo Coronado, Eddy Picado. First row: Roger Flores, José Jaikel, Vladimir Quesada, Víctor Badilla.
Saprissa left no doubt who was the strongest in this season: in the first stage they lost just 3 games and left second-placed Alajuelense 8 points behind (still 2 points for a win were given). Then won the Hexagonal second stage as well, so there was no final as such, for Saprissa won already everything. One more title for the leading Costarican club.
In view of the success of Costa Rica at the World Cup, it is perhaps interesting to see how the known squads were represented: Uruguay de Coronado had no national team player. CD Saprissa had 8 players in the national team – however, in the team above only 3 are present: Roger Flores, Jose Jaikel, and Vladimir Quesada. That means… either the club had strong and fairly equal squad, so variety was no problem, or those who impressed at the World Cup went to play abroad. Speculations, of course. Little remained from this championship other than statistical results.
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