Colombia U23

Rio de Janeiro, August 2016: the quarter-final against Brazil U23 ended 2–0, and Colombia went out to Brazil. It was Brazil who closed the door.

It borrows everything from above it — the yellow shirt, blue shorts and red socks, and the name Los Cafeteros , carried over from the country's coffee trade. The under-23s have no ground of their own. They train at the Centro de Formación Integral in Bogotá's Parque Simón Bolívar, the base shared by every national side, and play wherever the tournament sends them: Pereira, Cartagena, Barranquilla.

The trophies come from the regional games rather than the continental ones. Colombia returned to win the Central American and Caribbean Games in 2006 and 2018. The Bolivarian Games have gone their way five times, the South American Games three.

The CONMEBOL Pre-Olympic Tournament decides which two South American sides travel to the Games, and Colombia have finished second in it four times — 1968, 1972, 1980 and 1992 — and fourth on four more occasions, most recently in 2020, when the failure cost them a place in Tokyo.

Brazil are the reference point in Olympic years, Argentina in the qualifying rounds that come before them.