It was one of those nights when Cusco shifted the spotlight from its tourism engine to football. At a stadium named after Garcilaso de la Vega – celebrated for his chronicles about the Inca empire – around 30,000 people gathered to witness something far more immediate than nearby Machu Picchu, arguably the best-known archaeological site in the Americas. Cusco’s biggest team, Cienciano, were set to play in the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana quarter-final, 23 years after they became the first Peruvian club to lift an international trophy.
This is about who we are; you can’t be from Cusco and not be a Cienciano fan. We were born a small club, but anything is possible with Cienciano and the Copa Sudamericana.” As is the case with football in large parts of Latin America, British immigrants had much to do with Cienciano’s origins. An Englishman, William Newell, introduced football to his students at Cusco’s National School of Science and Arts, which opened shortly after Peru gained independence from Spain.
They founded what is now Cienciano, and the club played its first match in 1902. It remained in amateur and regional divisions for seven decades before entering the country’s professional league in the early 1970s. A few hours before Cienciano, whose home stadium is at an altitude of 11,030ft (3,353m), kicked off their quarter-final against Uruguay’s Montevideo City Torque, the school that inspired the club’s name stood empty.
Its walls carried reminders that this is one of Peru’s oldest public schools from the republican era. Murals featured Copa Sudamericana trophies and players kicking a football. Outside the school, fans began arriving in droves.
They carried drums and huge flags that read Papá de América (America’s Dad). These small groups made up La Furia Roja, or the Red Fury, the official title for its barra brava. Cienciano’s red jerseys contrasted with the Plateresque facade of the Church of San Francisco and the cloudy sky behind them.
Some fans said they were too young to remember Cienciano’s 2003 Copa Sudamericana campaign. Others grew up hearing stories about an invincible club from Cusco. In a city where history and mysticism merge, the legend was true: the International Federation of Football History & Statistics named Cienciano the best team in the world for December 2003.
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