Rancho Santana

Rancho Santana's rise to Liga Primera in 2024 put them in rooms occupied for decades by clubs with proper histories. The promotion itself came at the expense of Juventus, settled in a decider that ended a run through the Second Division under coach Carlos Javier Martino.

The team plays out of Campo Fun Limon, a ground that holds 1,000 people. The shirt is green-bodied claims aside, actually white through the torso with green sleeves, shorts and socks, and locally the side goes by Máquina Naranja, the Orange Machine, a nickname that has nothing to do with the kit colours and everything to do with something else supporters kept calling them.

By early 2025 the dugout had already changed hands once, from Jonathan Orellana to Mauricio Cruz, who had run the team earlier in the promotion year and returned to it. The squad Cruz inherited leans heavily on imports: a Mexican forward in Taufic Guarch, a Costa Rican and a Brazilian in defence, a Colombian alongside them, and a midfielder in Isacq De Leeuw who holds both Nicaraguan and Dutch nationality — an unusual spread for a club that, before 2024, had never played above the Second Division.

No league title sits in the cabinet, no Nicaraguan Cup either. What Rancho Santana has is the promotion itself, and the fact that it took a club founded in 2015 fewer than ten years to get there.