Guatemala U20

Four meetings since 2008 and Guatemala have not won any of them in normal time — a 2:1 defeat at the 2024 CONCACAF U-20 Championship.

Against Panama the ledger is longer and closer: ten matches since 2007, five Panamanian wins to three, with Guatemala's 3:1 in June 2022 among the better nights. The United States are the more recent obstacle — a 1:0 quarter-final defeat in July 2024 — though the fixture also produced the result the programme is measured by. In the 2011 qualifying quarter-final Guatemala beat the Americans 2:1 and reached a World Cup for the first time, under the Paraguayan coach Éver Hugo Almeida. In Colombia they went out in the last 16, having been beaten heavily by Uruguay along the way.

The Indonesia trip in 2023 was worse: three group games, three defeats, to New Zealand, Argentina and Uzbekistan, and 22nd place out of 24. Rafael Loredo, the Mexican coach who had taken them there, was dismissed that September and replaced by another Mexican, Marvin Cabrera. Coaches from both spells have pointed to the same thing — a squad without depth behind the first eleven.

Arquímides Ordóñez, who made the team of the tournament at the 2022 continental championship, came through FC Cincinnati's academy and has since played in Sweden, Moldova and the American lower divisions; he was in the senior squad for the 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup, as was Rudy Muñoz of Municipal.

The federation itself dates to 1919 and joined CONCACAF in 1961. A year later the youth side turned up in Panama for the first continental youth tournament and finished second — the earliest record of the team existing at all, and still, alongside 1973, its best finish.