Celaya

Querétaro sat on the other side of most of Celaya's history, not as a neutral neighbour but as the club that once used Celaya as a feeder team. That kind of tie breeds resentment rather than friendship, and by the time the two met as separate rivals in the same region, there was no shortage of it, even without a shared derby name to put on it.

The club Miguel Iriarte Montes registered on 7 February 1954 in the Segunda División Profesional barely resembles the one that closed its doors decades later. It went by Real Celaya, then Atlético Celaya after folding in Atlético Español and Escuadra Celeste, then Cajeteros de Celaya, then plain Club Celaya, before the name Celaya F.C. came back. The shirt changed with it: red and white in the 1950s, sky blue during the Atlético years, and only in the late 1980s and early 1990s did the white and black settle in for good, alongside the nickname Toros. Cajeteros stuck too.

Its best season came under the Atlético Celaya name, in 1995–96, when a squad carrying Emilio Butragueño, Hugo Sánchez and Michel reached the Primera División final and lost to Necaxa on away goals after two goalless legs either side of a 1–1 draw. In July 2026 the first team was dissolved when its Liga de Expansión MX place was sold on to form Piratas de Veracruz.

What survives of it locally is mostly the memory of facing Querétaro.