Deportivo Toluca F.C.
Deportivo Toluca Fútbol Club S.A. de C.V., simplified as Toluca FC, is a Mexican professional football club based in Toluca, State of Mexico. It competes in Liga MX, the top division of Mexican football, and plays its home matches at the Estadio Nemesio Díez. Founded in 1917 as Club Deportivo Toluca, it is one of seven Mexican clubs that have never been relegated.
Domestically, Toluca FC is one of the most successful Mexican clubs, winning 12 Liga MX titles, two Copa MX titles and 5 Campeón de Campeones. Internationally, it has won two CONCACAF Champions Cup titles and also finished as runners-up in the 1969 Copa Interamericana. Subregionally, it has won one Campeones Cup.
The club's top goalscorer is José Saturnino Cardozo, who played from 1995 to 2005 and scored 249 goals in 332 appearances.
History
Early years (1916-1950)
Football in Toluca came with the idea of the German brothers Manuel and Francisco Henkel, owners of the "La Huerta" hacienda located in Zinacantepec near the city of Toluca. The Henkels implemented football on the farm, with the desire to entertain their farmhands during their free hours; Some time later, they launched the official creation of the "La Huerta" team, made up of the hacienda's workers.Another of the main promoters of football in the city of Toluca was Román Ferrat Alday, who met every Sunday with a group of friends to practice football on some land near Alameda Central. On his part, the Henkel family used the services of the outstanding physical trainer Filiberto Navas Valdés, who was distinguished by his career in athletics, basketball, Greco-Roman wrestling and boxing.
The Henkels' idea of promoting football in Toluca was carried out with the creation of a second team, called Xinantécatl in honor of the Nevado de Toluca and made up of workers from the Toluca-Tenango Railway and the Light Company, directed by Eduardo Henkel, father of Manuel and Francisco.
As time went by, concern about football in Toluca increased and meetings began to be organized in the Ferrat family home and in the "La Valenciana" store, around the creation of a team that would represent the city in the state and national leagues. There were many meetings in which Román Ferrat Alday, Fernando and Armando Mañón, Alfonso Faure, José Estrada Madrid, Raymundo Pichardo, Joaquín Lajous, Arnulfo García Daniel Valero, Manuel Henkel, Flavio Martínez, Filiberto Navas and José Placencia participated.
Finally, on February 12, 1917, the charter of Deportivo Toluca was drawn up in the Ferrat-Solá family home, located at number #37 on Juárez Avenue; forming a board of directors that was joined by personalities such as Leonardo and Joaquín Sánchez, Abel Moreno and Manuel Lara. However, the founding document of the Toluca Sports Club was lost with the beginnings of the Revolution that hit Mexico at that time and was never recovered.
The objective of turning the team into a protagonist of national football began with the hiring of Moisés Plata who had started at Xinantécatl. The board of directors of the Toluca Sports Club acquired the land of the so-called "Gachupines Dam" located on what is now Vasco de Quiroga Street, between Hidalgo Poniente, Aurelio J. Venegas and Buenaventura Merlín, property of Francisco Negrete.
The Ferrat family was in charge of financially supporting the newly formed team, acquiring land located on Colón Avenue where the first official headquarters of Deportivo Toluca was established, which consisted of a small football field. And some wooden stands with a covered section to protect the ladies who attended the game. In 1919, the land of the so-called "Gachupines Dam" located on the streets of Vasco de Quiroga, Hidalgo poniente, Aurelio Venegas and Buenaventura Merlín, which were owned by Francisco Negrete, was acquired.
Between 1918 and 1919, new teams emerged such as; the “Azteca”, the “Unión” and the “Águila”, the latter sponsored by Fernando Barreto who would later be linked to Deportivo Toluca; Fernando Barreto ventured into football with the creation of several teams, with which he sought to win the Mexican State Championship. His first team was "Águila", however it only achieved a runner-up finish in 1919 and the team was replaced by "Cuauhtémoc" and this in turn by "Reforma".
In 1921, the governor of the State of Mexico, Manuel Campos Mena, organized a series of celebrations in which Deportivo Toluca participated, with the Tivoli field as its headquarters, which is currently a residential area that it preserves in its name. According to a newspaper from that time, players from Barreto's team appeared in Toluca such as Reynaldo Torres, Francisco Silva and Juan Albarrán, better known as "the devil" ; However, it was not specified whether the players had been loaned or had been acquired as reinforcements for the club.
With the end of the Revolution, the country entered into crisis and many shareholders of Deportivo Toluca were forced to emigrate from the Mexican capital. With this, Deportivo Toluca entered into crisis and was forced to invite new investors, among whom was Fernando Barreto. In mid-1926, Barreto received an invitation from Atlético León to play a series of three games in the city of León, Guanajuato of which Deportivo Toluca achieved two unexpected victories.
By 1930, the two most important championships in Mexico City were that of the Football Federation and that of the Central Federation. That same year, Deportivo Toluca was invited to participate in one of the two most important championships in the Federal District, organized by the Central Federation together with traditional teams such as España, Necaxa and América that had separated from the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol that same year.
Since 1930, Deportivo Toluca carried out a restructuring through which Deportivo became a Public Limited Company with the prolonged contributions of Moisés Plata. With this restructuring, the club sought to give more benefits to its members not only in the area of football, but also in basketball, baseball, tennis, racquetball and casino games. However, with the incursion into new sports, most of the members neglected football, which was only covered by Jesús Piña and Fernando Barreto.
By 1931, and after having achieved a well-deserved third place in the Central Federation championship; Deportivo Toluca returned to the state championships; arriving with the aura of having played a tournament with the three most outstanding teams in the Federal District. The prestige that the team had been enjoying increased further with the matches that Deportivo Toluca played against Club España, Atlas de Guadalajara and Club América, whom it defeated 3-2 on December 21, 1930.
Another of the most relevant events at this time was the confrontation of Deportivo Toluca against Libertad of Costa Rica since it represented the first international duel in the history of the Scarlets. Players like Rodolfo Muñoz, Goldoni and Hutt stand out in the match.
In 1935, players such as David Albiter, Carlos Ballesteros, Alberto Mendoza and Samuel Martínez García appeared, who would be a fundamental key to the team's promotion to the Primera División de México. In 1936, Fernando Torres became president and the team retained the title of National Amateur Champion with players such as Horacio Garduño, Manuel Esquivel, Eustolio Enríquez, Aníbal Espinoza, Alfonso García, Manuel Estana, Guillermo Estrada, Ricardo Barraza, Héctor Barraza, Pascual Valdés, Rodolfo Guadarrama, Vicente Quintana and Aurelio Moreno.
One of the great players who emerged in Deportivo during this era was Alberto Mendoza, known as "El Caballo". Alberto started at Deportivo as a reserve and little by little he earned a place as a starter in the team; However, the popularity of "Caballo" reached its peak when Deportivo Toluca beat a Spanish club called Euskadi with four goals from Mendoza on June 16, 1939.
The triumph of Deportivo Toluca against the Spanish surprised everyone and raised the pride of Deportivo Toluca; This was mainly due to the fact that Deportivo Toluca did not participate in any renowned tournament and was a purely amateur team. The squad that Deportivo Toluca presented in that victory was made up of Almaquio Castañeda, Martí Ventolrà, José Gómez, Ricardo Barraza, Jorge Quesada, Adolfo Téllez, José Quesada and Amado López, Óscar Hernández, among others.
Between 1944 and 1945, Deportivo Toluca faced an economic crisis because the fees paid by its shareholders were not enough to maintain the needs of the club. Faced with this situation, the then president of Deportivo Toluca, Ignacio Longares, decided to increase the shares of his shareholders, causing discouragement in many of them, who chose to sell their shares to Longares himself.
In 1943, the professional era of the Primera División de México, made up of 5 teams from the Federal District, 3 from Veracruz and 2 from Jalisco. During the next two years, the Federation began to receive new applications to join the league, so teams such as León, Oro de Jalisco, Puebla, Monterrey, San Sebastián and Tampico joined as well.
In 1945, Samuel Martínez García became president, who soon became identified with Deportivo Toluca, with whom he won the Mexican State Championship that same year. After winning the championship, Deportivo Toluca was invited to play in the Federal District Reserve League, losing its inaugural match by a thunderous score of 10-0 against Red Star; However, Deportivo Toluca was able to overcome its shaky start and finished the tournament in third place, only below Real España and Club América.
During this stage, Deportivo Toluca obtained its last title in the Mexican State Championship, with the “Tivoli” facilities as its headquarters on the field called “Patria” located between Aurelio J. Venegas, Morelos Poniente, Felipe Villanueva and Constituciónes streets, exactly where the Estadio Nemesio Díez is located today, known as "La Bombonera" in Toluca for its similarity to a "box of chocolates."
The popularity and desire of many teams to enter the Primera División motivated to begin preparations for the creation of the Segunda División de México, implementing the mandatory relegation of the team that finished last in the Primera División, and at the same time, the promotion of the champion team in the Segunda División.
The Major League published a call, with a series of requirements for teams interested in entering the Segunda División. The Deportivo Toluca board began to meet the requirements imposed by the Major League, however the consolidation of the Segunda División would take three more years due to the merger of the Major League and the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol, which took place between 1948 and 1950. The last team of Deportivo Toluca in the Reserves Tournament held at the Estadio Ciudad de los Deportes, was made up of Porfirio Peña, Edid Isaac, Ricardo Barreto, Santiago Ramírez, Juan Moya, Miguel Vélez, José Luis Zavalla, Alfredo Becerril, Francisco García, Álvaro Pineda and Felipe Galindo.
With the unification of Mexican football, the creation of the Segunda División de México was accelerated, founded by the Deportivo Toluca Fútbol Club, the Club Deportivo Zamora, the Pachuca Club de Fútbol, the Monarcas Morelia, the Club Deportivo Irapuato, the Querétaro Fútbol Club and the Club Atlético Zacatepec; being the founding teams of the new division.