Cibao

Manuel Estrella built his name in Santiago de los Caballeros on engineering and steel, and when the Dominican Republic went about assembling its first professional national league, he put a team into it. Cibao FC entered as one of the ten founder members in 2015.

Then, in May 2017, Cibao went to the CFU Club Championship, beat Jabloteh 1-0 in the final and saw it out: no Dominican club had won anything abroad before. The league followed in 2018, and after a gap the orange run of 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Most of what the country's football has to hand out since then has gone to Cibao or to Club Atlético Pantoja from Santo Domingo, which is why their meetings are simply called El Clásico.

The squad has been put together by buying rather than raising. Players arrive from Colombia, Haiti and Venezuela, or from other Dominican sides, already formed; the Haitian Herold Charles stayed ten years, longer than most careers in the league last. That is the club's method and also its limit. The academy, opened in partnership with the Real Madrid foundation as the first technical school of its kind in Latin America, has moved young players such as Elián López into the first team, but Cibao has yet to produce anyone whose name travels — no graduate has gone on to Europe or to MLS, and eleven years in, that is still the column left blank.