Club Stories: The renaissance of Magallanes, Chile’s ‘Old and beloved’
Words Neel Shelat
These days, it seems the beautiful game is stripped of its beauty with some distasteful developments on a daily basis. Yet, if you look hard enough, you can still find some things to smile about.
These are the sort of stories we aim to highlight with our Club Stories series, where our next expedition takes us to Chile.
From the longest country in the world, we have a 125-year-long story about a club nicknamed ‘El Viejo y Querido’ – ‘the old and beloved’. Officially, they are known as Club Deportivo Magallanes.
Before we start tracing the club’s history, it is important to note that Magallanes the football club has nothing to do with Magallanes the geographical region. That happens to be in Chile as well, way down at the southernmost tip of the country. Administratively, it is clubbed with the Chilean Antarctic Territory.
Among the region’s features is the Strait of Magellan, named after Fernão de Magalhães, known to Spanish speakers as Fernando de Magallanes and to English speakers as Ferdinand Magellan.
The football club’s present name also indirectly honours the leader of the first expedition to successfully circumnavigate the earth, but it was named after the strait and not the sailor. However, when it was born in 1897, the club was known as Atlético Escuela Normal.
‘Escuela’ is the word for ‘school’ in Spanish, and the reason behind that name is that it was founded by a group of school teachers. That name only lasted for a few years, though, after which it underwent a couple of re-brandings before being called Magallanes from 1904 onwards.
That name was adopted when the club joined the Asociación de Fútbol de Santiago (AFS) – the first organisation to host seasonal football tournaments in Chile – a year after its founding. They would go on to win five titles in this division, including back-to-back in 1920 and 1921.
A few years later, though, the club would find itself in a bit of a crisis as a serious conflict between the decision-makers and players resulted in a group of players led by David Arellano leaving to form a club of their own in 1925. Named Colo-Colo, they are now the biggest and most successful club in Chile by some margin.
A year later, there would be a big development in the Chilean football landscape as various regional associations including the AFS came together to form a national body. Still, due to administrative reasons, the competitions remained decentralised until 1933.
At that time, a rift between the AFS and its clubs saw a number of them (including Magallanes and Colo-Colo) leave to form their own competition named the Liga Profesional de Fútbol, the first professional football tournament in the country. Soon enough, they would reconcile with the AFS and assimilate more teams into the competition, which continues to this day as the Primera División at the very top of the Chilean pyramid.
In terms of trophies and titles, this was Magallanes’ heyday. They won the first three titles of this competition back-to-back and went on to add a fourth to their collection in 1938. That also happens to be the last top-flight title they won.
Since then, Magallanes’ story has mostly been one of disappointment and turmoil. They suffered their first relegation in 1961 – a year after the most powerful earthquake in recorded history hit Chile and a year before they hosted the 1962 FIFA Men’s World Cup. They bounced straight back up, but their downward trajectory had well and truly begun.
In 1975, the Albiceleste (as they are known due to their colours) suffered another relegation from the top flight, and this time they would stay away for four years before coming back up. There would be time for some success in 1985 as they qualified for their first-ever Copa Libertadores campaign, but this would be outweighed by a devastating relegation in the subsequent season.
The reason we are referring to this relegation as devastating is that Magallanes would take a long time to turn their fortunes around again. They would go on to spend well over three decades in the lower tiers, even dropping into the semi-professional divisions.
The exact reasons behind Magallanes’ downfall from the glory days in the 1930s are a little tough to trace, but on the whole, it can be put down to general mismanagement of already-limited finances and some less-than-ideal ownership changes.
Their troubles went up a notch in 1993, when they suffered relegation to the third tier. Of course, that was the result of a poor season on the pitch, but what ended up sending them down was a four-point deduction they received for financial irregularities in the midst of an ownership change.
One of the factors that helped Magallanes stay afloat in the depths of the pyramid was the fact that they were granted a special leeway to effectively serve as a sort of B team to Colo-Colo, who loaned out a lot of their out-of-favour players to them. This hugely helped Magallanes in terms of their financial situation and also provided them with quality players to escape the third tier.
Magallanes would be back to the Primera B from the 1996 season onwards, but their issues were far from over. Some say that the club’s administrators were hoping not to get promoted even when the team was performing pretty well since they “would not be able to afford it”, which should say a lot about the sort of people running the club.
They would experience a couple of more ownership changes in the subsequent decade, but by this point, the position of the club had changed a great deal and among their concerns was a dwindling fanbase.
Since its inception, Magallanes has very much been a people’s club. Its supporter base is rooted in the San Bernardo and Maipú communes in Santiago, both of which can be described as working-class districts with close-knit communities.
The football club was important to those who watched it in the top flight in the mid-20th century, but subsequent generations were lured by the success of Colo-Colo, whose fanbase also has a working-class core in Santiago.
On the flip side, this is perhaps why they are so beloved in Chile these days. Another major factor is their family-friendly fan culture. The club does not have any Barra Bravas, which are organised (and often violent) supporter groups in Latin America that often have political connections (certainly so in Chile). Their absence makes for a guaranteed peaceful atmosphere in Magallanes’ home matches.
Either way, at the turn of the century, the club’s primary goal was survival in the second tier as opposed to challenging for promotion. They would succeed until 2006, which was followed by another four-year spell in the third tier.
2011 was a refreshing year for Magallanes as they not only returned to the second tier and managed to survive, but went on a memorable cup run. They beat top-flight sides Universidad de Chile, Unión San Felipe, Santiago Morning (who also happen to be their arch-rivals) and Deportes La Serena en route to the final, where they lost out on penalties after two legs against Universidad Católica.
One might have hoped that Magallanes would at least start challenging for promotion again on the back of that cup run, but that was not to be. Instead, they continued to finish precariously close to the bottom of the table and miles off the top in the subsequent few years, so a return to the top flight remained a distant dream.
It would take more than hope for Magallanes to realise that; it would take money. In 2019, they finally got that in relatively good measure when football agent Cristián Ogalde, whose clientele includes ex-Barcelona and Manchester City goalkeeper Claudio Bravo, completed a majority buyout of the club.
Given their history of ownership issues, Albiceleste fans were initially sceptical of the motives behind the takeover, but Ogalde was quick to outline an ambitious plan that involved promotion as soon as possible. To his credit, he acted accordingly, as the club brought in a number of seasoned top-flight professionals as well as exciting young talents.
Nevertheless, Magallanes fell just short of the promotion play-offs in 2020 and 2021, but they were clearly on the up. In the latter season, they were being coached by Nicolás Núñez, a former player who had retired at the club in 2019 to move into an assistant managerial role before taking over the hotseat.
He instilled a very attractive and attack-minded brand of football, which really started to click in 2022. At the midway point of the season, they were unbeaten and 11 points clear at the top of the table, so the title and its accompanying reward of automatic promotion seemed all but theirs.
However, the wheels started to fall off their title charge in the second half of the season as they dropped points on eight occasions. That meant it all boiled down to the final matchday, when they had to at least match Cobreloa’s result to maintain top spot. The chasers were held to a draw by Magallanes’ rivals Santiago Morning, but a brace from Magallanes’ top scorer César Cortés helped them win their match and therefore the title anyway.
Around the same time, Núñez’s men were also occupied by another memorable Copa Chile campaign. On their way to another final, they beat Primeira B challengers Cobreloa on penalties as well as top-flight sides Everton and Huachipato.
Unión Española stood between them and a first major trophy in 84 years, which was to be decided in a one-off final. After a dramatic 90 minutes where both sides had the lead for certain periods, Magallanes emerged victorious 7-6 on penalties.
That set El Viejo y Querido up for a long-awaited competitive match against top-flight champions Colo-Colo for the 2023 Supercopa de Chile. Back in the 1930s, matches between these two teams were among the fiercest derbies in Chile as wounds of the breakaway were fresh, but Magallanes’ subsequent struggles, Colo-Colo’s support and the aforementioned supporter migration has significantly sweetened relations by now.
Of course, there were no freebies going to be handed out on the pitch, so a close match ensued. It all boiled down to penalties again and the result remained the same from a Magallanes’ point of view. After over eight decades of winning nothing, Magallanes added two trophies to their cabinet in the space of a few months.
In spite of these successes, the club must remain realistic in their targets for this season. Their priority in the league has to be survival, as they are yet to win a match at the time of writing. Nonetheless, they do seem to have enough quality to avoid going straight back down.
Another result of Magallanes’ Copa Chile success is that they have earned a spot in the Copa Libertadores qualifiers. So, when they take on Bolivian side Always Ready later in February, they will begin just their second-ever Libertadores season. Again, their expectations should not be high since being there is a massive achievement in itself.
There is some other work to be done too. Magallanes’ on-pitch performances and sporting management are being handled pretty well at the moment, but the club is in need of development in some other aspects. The most glaring of those is their stadium, which is the Estadio Municipal Luis Navarro Avilés.
The venue is owned by the Municipality of San Bernardo, but the club struck an agreement to relocate there in 2014 to return to the commune where they were founded. The stadium’s infrastructure is in need of improvement, and its capacity is a meagre 3,500, making it the smallest in the top flight by some margin.
On the whole, though, it is safe to say that Magallanes are enjoying something of a renaissance now. After over three and a half decades of being lost in the wilderness of the lower divisions, they have finally returned to the top flight. More importantly, they have done so in the shape of a well-run football club that already has titles under its belt and continental football to boot.
Chile’s old and beloved are back where they belong in terms of the league pyramid, but they will now be aiming to return to the very top. The final stretch of the climb is very steep, but if there is any team that can do it, it has to be the one that re-emerged from the third-tier trenches.
With thanks to Daniel Campos of Chilean Football News and others for their inputs and insights.
Image courtesy of Magallanes Official Twitter.
