Barranquilla

Arturo Char built a football school in Barranquilla in 2005, meant to feed talent into Atlético Junior, the club his father Fuad Char owned. On 8 April that year the project became a club in its own right, Barranquilla Fútbol Club, though the purpose stayed the same: find and train players from the city before Junior ever needed them.

The pipeline produced results well beyond the city. Carlos Bacca and Teófilo Gutiérrez both passed through the academy before their careers carried them abroad, and Luis Díaz came up through the same system years later. The club has kept the nickname La Academia for that reason, alongside the more common Los Rojos de Curramba.

Barranquilla FC has never played outside Colombia's second division, the Categoría Primera B, and plays its home matches at the Estadio Municipal Romelio Martínez. Matches against Junior are known as the derbi barranquillero, or derbi quillero, a fixture that dates to 26 March 2008, when Junior won the first official meeting 1-0.

The club finished top of the regular phase twice, in 2008-II and 2017-II, and lost the promotion playoff both times. Two decades after Char's academy took on its own name, Barranquilla FC has still never lifted a title, and has never reached Colombia's top division.