Jalapa

Deportivo Ocotal sat twenty-odd kilometres away in the same department, Nueva Segovia, and that proximity did the job any rivalry needs: a short trip, a reason to close the shops. Walter Ferretti mattered for a different reason, settled on the pitch rather than the map. In 2001–02 Jalapa met the reigning champions in the final and beat them: a 1-1 draw away, then a 4-0 win at home that emptied the town onto the street. It remains the only Primera División title the club won, and money undid what it built almost immediately — the squad that had just beaten a champion could not be kept together. The following year's CONCACAF Champions' Cup measured the fall in goals conceded: 40 across three games, including a 0-17 defeat to El Salvador's FAS and a 0-19 loss to Panama's Árabe Unido, scorelines that still turn up whenever the competition's history gets discussed. Financial trouble that had started with the title defence never eased, and Deportivo Jalapa folded between 2007 and 2009.

Founded in 1995, the club had never played anywhere but the Estadio Alejandro Ramos, a 1,000-seat ground in yellow and blue that outlasted it. A successor, ART Municipal Jalapa, formed in 2011 and took up residence at the same stadium, working its way back up through the Segunda División with titles in the 2012 Apertura and 2013 Clausura. The town is small enough that one ground has now carried two clubs through one era each — the first ending in the biggest scoreline swings in the region's continental record, the second still climbing back toward the division its predecessor once won outright.