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The team has made three Olympic tournament appearances, competing at the 1968, 1976, and 1988 Olympic Games. It has never qualified for a finals tournament of the World Cup. Guatemala has won the 3rd CONCACAF Championship in 1967 and the UNCAF Nations Cup in 2001. The team's best performance in a CONCACAF Gold Cup was at the 1996 edition, where it finished fourth. Guatemala obtained the silver medal at the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas, Venezuela. The country has not organized any major international football competitions, but it did organize the 2000 FIFA Futsal World Championship. Guatemala is a country that participates in World Cup Qualifiers for the area of CONCACAF but they have fail to reach a World Cup of any category. But they have reached the final round 4 times. The team was nicknamed "los azules y blancos (the blue and white). After a few years more teams were founded and the national team began to play in 1921, they played their first game against Honduras winning 10-1. Guatemala started playing in World Cup Qualifiers for the frist time in 1958. Guatemala did not play very well in their first few years, but they started to show some progress as the years went on, although they cannot be compared to countries like USA or Mexico. In 1967, they showed some major progress by classifying to the Olympic Games of Mexico City 1968. While in the Olympic games they won 1:0 to Czechoslovakia, also winning 4:1 to Thailand, and losing to Bulgaria 2:1. They went on the next round where they lost to future champion Hungary 1:0. By the end of the Olympics they were the 6th best team in the world. After that performance they began to have more important victories added to their resume. They have been the Copa UNCAF champions once, the other times they finished second or third, which meant they sealed their ticket to the Gold Cup. In 1993 the team did not participate in the UNCAF tournament. In the World Cup Qualifiers to Germany 2006, they went all the way to the last round, where they beat Surinam 4:2 in the second round, and then finished in second place behind Costa Rica in group B, while the other two teams were Honduras and Canada. In the third round they had wins against Canada, Costa Rica and then tied against Honduras and then lost to Costa Rica and then won 1:0 to Honduras, which was when they sealed their pass to the last round and last lost to Canada. In the last round, they finished in 5th place, they needed a Mexico win or tie against Trinidad and Tobago to advance to the FIFA World Cup. They tried to classify to South Africa 2010, but due to bad results both at home and away, they failed to reach a World Cup again. One of the most talented players in Guatemala history is Carlos Ruiz, who plays for Puebla in Mexico. |