Costa Rica U23

The under-23 side exists for one purpose: to get Costa Rica to an Olympic tournament, and the closest it has come was a night in 2004 when Mexico settled the CONCACAF Men's Pre-Olympic Tournament final in extra time. Emil Martínez scored, the game finished 0-1, and the Olympic place went elsewhere.

That 2004 squad matters more now than the result does. Álvaro Saborío was in it, and went on to score more goals for Costa Rica than anyone; Júnior Díaz was in it too, and was still in the side ten years later when the senior team reached a World Cup quarter-final. A team that never qualified turned out to be the staging post for most of the players who defined the decade that followed.

The record in the Central American and Caribbean Games runs back to 1930, when Costa Rica finished second, and the country has kept finishing second or third there for the better part of a century — silver again in 2023, bronzes in 1990, 1998, 2002 and 2006. The one gold came in 1993.

There is no fixed home. The team plays where it is put — usually the Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica in San José, sometimes the Complejo Deportivo FCRF-Plycem, sometimes the Estadio Ricardo Saprissa Aymá. The red shirts and blue shorts are the flag's, and the nickname, La Sele, is borrowed from the senior team rather than earned separately.

The best of the recent work came at the 2011 Pan American Games, where Carlos Watson took the team to fourth and Bryan Vega scored against Brazil. Jonathan McDonald finished with three goals, the most of anyone in the squad. The current generation — Brandon Aguilera, Kenneth Vargas, Álvaro Zamora among them — passed through the 2023 Maurice Revello Tournament and has since been called up by the senior side.