Real Cartagena

Cartagena de Indias sells itself abroad as a walled Caribbean port, all colonial stone and cruise ships in the bay. Real Cartagena's own history was interrupted almost as soon as it began. Founded in 1971, the side lasted one season in Primera A, finished eleventh, then lost its professional licence the following year and spent nearly two decades in amateur football. Only on 2 February 1992, when the club bought back a pro licence from Sporting de Barranquilla and reclaimed the Real Cartagena name, did DIMAYOR recognise it as reborn — the date the federation still counts as the club's founding, not 1971.

Supporters call the team Los Auriverdes for the yellow and green that has carried the shirt for most of its history, though a switch toward blue in recent seasons has not gone unchallenged among fans who want the old combination back. Real Cartagena play at the Estadio Olímpico Jaime Morón León, which holds around 17,000.

Colombia's top flight has given Real Cartagena no silverware. The closest it came was the 2005 Torneo Finalización, when Deportivo Cali beat it in both legs of the final. What the club does own are three Primera B titles — 1999, 2004 and 2008 — each one a promotion back to the top flight. It has not played in Primera A since 2012, and its deepest run in the Copa Colombia was a semi-final in 2013. In 2020, the agency ColombiaGol took a 74.09% stake in the club; three years later the previous owners were suing over money they said they were still owed.

Matches against Unión Magdalena of Santa Marta are billed along the coast as the Clásico Costeño. No player wore the Real Cartagena shirt more often than Juan Salcedo, who passed 260 appearances for the club, but the name best known outside Cartagena is René Higuita, the goalkeeper who spent 2000 and 2001 there.