Juventude

The Copa do Brasil final of 1999 remains the club's defining hour: a 2-1 win at home over Botafogo followed by a 0-0 draw away sealed the trophy, and Juventude became the only club from the interior of Rio Grande do Sul to lift that particular cup. Five years earlier, the Série B title had already put the club on the national map, and in 1998 it took the Campeonato Gaúcho by beating Internacional in the final without losing a single match along the way — the first unbeaten champion the state competition had seen. Two Copa FGF titles followed in 2011 and 2012, and the club came close again in 2015 and 2024, finishing runner-up in the state championship both times, on each occasion behind Grêmio.

The 35 young men who founded the club did so on 29 June 1913, in Caxias do Sul, and the name Esporte Clube Juventude has never changed since. What has multiplied are the nicknames locals use for the team in green and white — Periquito among them.

Some of its own have gone on to bigger things elsewhere: Paulo César Tinga left in the 1990s and later won the Copa Libertadores twice with Internacional, wearing the Brazil shirt along the way; the Uruguayan defender Hugo de León arrived in the late 1970s, became a fixture at the back, and later added a Libertadores and an Intercontinental Cup with Grêmio. Alan Kardec joined in 2024, in the final stretch of his career.

Home matches are played at the Estádio Alfredo Jaconi, known locally as the Jaconero.