Dominican Republic

Santiago de los Caballeros holds Estadio Cibao FC, and it is here, rather than in the capital, that the national side plays most of its home matches. The Federación Dominicana de Fútbol, the body that runs the team, was set up in 1953 and CONCACAF in 1964, but it took until May 1967 for the team to play its first official match, an 8-0 defeat to Haiti in Olympic qualifying. That scoreline set the tone for the fixture Dominicans still call the Derby of Hispaniola: Haiti has had the upper hand for most of the rivalry's history.

The team goes by Los Quisqueyanos, a name taken from the Taíno word for the island the two countries share. For decades that history offered little to point to beyond a bronze medal at the 1986 Central American and Caribbean Games. The turn came under Marcelo Neveleff, the Argentine coach who arrived in early 2023: in 2024-25 he took the side to the CONCACAF Nations League League B title, winning a group that included Bermuda, Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda, which brought both promotion to League A and a first-ever place in the Gold Cup, where the Dominican Republic reached the group stage in 2025.

Jean Carlos López captains a squad that has never reached a World Cup, and holds the appearance record for a side that spent most of its existence outside continental tournaments altogether. Dorny Romero remains the leading scorer with 28 goals, a tally built up match by match rather than in any single flourish, in a country where football has long run second to baseball but where that Nations League campaign gave the national team a support it had not had before.