Nacional De Muriae U20

Nacional de Muriaé now sits among the lower ranks of Minas Gerais football, a long way down from the state's top flight it once touched, and its competitive life these days runs through the municipal and regional structures rather than the Módulo I it reached decades ago.

That reach back to the elite came in 1969, when the club won the Campeonato Mineiro – Módulo II, the state's second division, and sealed promotion with a final played at the Mineirão in Belo Horizonte. Eight years later, on the same ground, Nacional beat Guarani of Divinópolis 2-0 to take the Torneio Incentivo Mineiro. Those two afternoons in the state capital remain the club's clearest brushes with wider recognition.

Closer to home, Nacional's record belongs to the city itself. It has won the Liga Esportiva de Muriaé, the municipal championship, nine times, stretching from 1955 to 1998. A more recent push came in 2014, when the club finished runner-up in the Segunda Divisão, the state's third tier.

The club, founded on 25 December 1927, plays in red, black and white, and locals know it as much by its nicknames as by its full name — Nacionalino among them, a diminutive that shows up regularly in the local press. Home matches are played at the Estádio Soares de Azevedo, known around Muriaé as the "Gigante da 356" for its position on the BR-356, a ground in a city where the club's history is measured less in state titles than in seasons played in front of its own crowd.