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| Full name | Club Sport Emelec | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nicknames | El Bombillo (The Lightbulb) El Ballet Azul (The Blue Ballet) El Equipo Millonario (The Millionaire Team) | |||
| Founded | 28 April 1929; 96 years ago (1929-04-28) | |||
| Ground | Estadio George Capwell | |||
| Capacity | 40,020 | |||
| Honorary President | Enrique Ponce Luque, Elias Wated | |||
| Chairman | Jorge Guzmán | |||
| Manager | Guillermo Duró | |||
| League | Ecuadorian Serie A | |||
| 2024 | Serie A, 10th of 16 | |||
| Website | www | |||
 Current season | ||||
Club Sport Emelec is an Ecuadorian sports club based inGuayaquil that is best known for their professionalfootball team. The football team plays in theEcuadorian Serie A, the highest level of professional football in the country.
Emelec has won fourteenSerie A titles and one of the division B, holding the record of doing so in all decades in which the Serie A has been played. They also have won seven regional titles (record in their region), a record-tying 5 of them in the professional era.
Emelec was founded on 28 April 1929 byGeorge Capwell, the American head of the Electric Company of Ecuador (Spanish:Empresa Eléctrica del Ecuador), from which the club is named after. The name of theirhome stadium pays homage to the club's founder. The club's most intense rivalry is with crosstown-teamBarcelona. Matches between the clubs are known asEl Clásico del Astillero.
The club was founded after an assembly of employees at theEmpresa Eléctrica del Ecuador, anelectric company in Guayaquil, decided to start an amateur sports league.[1] The initiative was spearheaded byGeorge Capwell, the executive officer of the company who came from the United States.[2][3] The first sports played in the club werebaseball,basketball,boxing,swimming,handball, andfootball. Capwell did not enjoy football, so the sport was supported only by his employees in non-official but recognized championships. This changed in the 1940s, when Capwell finally lent his support, resulting in the club winning several official local championships, building their ownstadium, and hosting the1947 South American Championship entirely in it.
In 1957, the club became the first national champions in football with a "dream team" that included Derek Haack,Cipriano Yu Lee, José Vicente Balseca, Cruz Ávila, Mariano Larraz, Carlos Alberto Raffo, Jaime Ubilla, Daniel Pinto, Rómulo Gómez and Suárez-Rizzo; they were coached by Eduardo "Tano" Spandre. Since then, they have accumulated thirteen more national titles, placing them 2nd in the national title count behindBarcelona with 15 titles and followed byEl Nacional with 13. They have also won seven local titles (two in the amateur area and five in the professional era).
In the 1990s, the football team saw success internationally. In 1995, they reached the semi-finals of theCopa Libertadores; they lost to eventual championsGrêmio.[4] In 2001, the team was close to becoming the first Ecuadorian club to win an international title when they were a finalist in the2001 Copa Merconorte. In the finals, they lost toMillionarios 3–1 on penalty kicks after tying on aggregate 2–2.
Several years after the creation of theEmpresa Eléctrica del Ecuador sports club, its founder, George Lewis Capwell, decided that it was time for the club to have its ownBaseball stadium, so in 1942Guayaquil's Municipal authorities donated 4 city blocks for the construction of the first private sports stadium in Ecuador. A year after that, in 1943, Emelec's staff officially named and initiated the construction of the George Capwell Stadium.
George Capwell Stadium opened its doors for the first time on 21 October 1945, the inaugural game was a Baseball match between Emelec and Oriente, and George Capwell played as a catcher for the "Azules" (Emelec). Although Emelec's president did not like football and their stadium was not initially intended to be a football field, soon after the inauguration the first football match was held. Emelec won 5–4 against an all stars team from the cities of Manta and Bahia.
The 1947Copa America competition was held exclusively at George Capwell Stadium, and an undefeatedArgentina became South America's champion with an all star team that included names likeAlfredo Di Stéfano,Félix Loustau, andNorberto Doroteo Méndez.Ecuador finished in 6th place. (Brazil did not participate on this competition).
After theEstadio Modelo was opened in 1959, the George Capwell Stadium became obsolete and was closed for many years. On several occasions it was almost destroyed for various projects that, luckily for the club, were never actually completed.
It wasn't until 1991 that with the leadership of Nassib Nehme that the George Capwell Stadium was reopened, to become once again the house of Emelec. Since its reopening the stadium has been enlarged twice and a new and final change was scheduled for 2014, to reach a final capacity of 45,000 spectators by March 2016.
At the moment the official capacity of the stadium according to the FEF (Federación Ecuatoriana de Fútbol) is 18,000 spectators. However, that number has not been changed even after the two enlargements were finished. The club completed a thorough overhaul and expansion of the stadium in 2017. It has a capacity of 40,000 spectators.
Emelec's training ground is located in the north ofGuayaquil in a neighborhood called Los Samanes and the training ground itself is called Complejo Deportivo de Los Samanes, translated to Los Samanes Sports Complex. The construction of the Samanes training ground started in 1984 and was finished in 1986 and was built byFilanbanco a large financial institution in Ecuador at the time.
Filanbanco had its own professional football which used Los Samanes until 1989 when despite being one of the top teams at the time,Filanbanco's football club was disbanded due to lack of supporters and high maintenance costs.
During the 1993Copa America held in Ecuador, the Samanes complex was used by the Argentinean delegation, they stayed and trained there and were very appreciative of its secluded nature and excellent facilities, that among other things included 4 professional football fields, an indoor football field, basketball courts, tennis courts, an Olympic size pool, social area and sleeping area.
AfterFilanbanco's football club was disbanded, the complex remained in the hands ofFilanbanco for their employees to use its facilities, until 1999 when the Ecuadorian financial crisis ended withFilanbanco going bankrupt and ending up in the hands of the AGD a governmental agency created to control, protect and administer the assets ofFilanbanco and other financial institutions that went bust during the crisis.
This meant that Los Samanes ended up in the hands of the Issfa (Instituto de Servicio Social de las Fuerzas Armadas) the Ecuadorian army's social security agency. Because Issfa had no real use for it, the then Football director of Emelec Mr.Omar Quintana Baquerizo managed to loan the training ground for the club and Emelec has been using it ever since.
Initially the agreement was a loan for 5 years, but when the 5 years passed the government and the club arranged a 100-year loan for the facilities, however the high monthly cost agreed has made the payments very difficult for the club and the new administrators led by the club's president Mr.Elias Wated are in talks with the government to settle on a definitive purchase of the training ground.
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Note: Flags indicate national team as defined underFIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
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Note: Flags indicate national team as defined underFIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
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Note: Flags indicate national team as defined underFIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
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Emelec has had nine players become the season top-scorer in the Serie A, three players become the top-scorer of the Costa champion (two players repeated), and one player become the top-scorer of the Copa Libertadores.
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The following players were chosen to represent their country at theFIFA World Cup while contracted to Emelec.
Walter Ayoví (2002)Augusto Jesús Poroso (2002)Wellington Sánchez (2002)Daniel Viteri (2002)Gabriel Achilier (2014)Óscar Bagüí (2014)Jorge Guagua (2014)The following managers won at least one trophy when in charge of Emelec:
Eduardo Spandre (won the 1957 Serie A)Mariano Larraz (won the 1961 Serie A)Fernando Paternoster (won the 1965 Serie A)Jorge Lazo (won the 1972 Serie A)Eduardo García (won the 1979 Serie A)
Juan Silva (won the 1988 Serie A)Salvador Capitano (won the 1993 Serie A)Carlos Torres Garcés (won the 1994 Serie A)Carlos Sevilla (won the 2001 Serie A)Rodolfo Motta (won the 2002 Serie A)
Gustavo Quinteros (won the 2013 and 2014 Serie A)Omar De Felipe (won the 2015 Serie A)Alfredo Arias (won the 2017 Serie A)Emelec is not only one of the most important football clubs in Ecuador, but it is rated as one of the most important sports club of the country. In their trophy room Emelec has hundreds of cups and medals that have been gained over the years in many different sports. The list includes:
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