El Farolito is an amateur

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

club based out of

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. It currently plays in the

National Premier Soccer League The National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) is an American men's association football, soccer league. The NPSL is a semi-professional league, comprising some teams that have paid players and some that are entirely amateur. The league is officially ...

(NPSL), generally considered the fourth tier of U.S. Soccer, within the Golden Gate Conference. The team is best known for its 1993 U.S. Open Cup championship under its previous name, Club Deportivo (CD) Mexico.

History

The club was founded in 1985 and was first known as El Farolito, named after the owner's chain of restaurants. 'El Faro' was a new force in the

San Francisco Soccer Football League The San Francisco Soccer Football League or SFSFL, established in 1902, is "the oldest American soccer league in continuous existence." The SFSFL is a men's semi-professional and amateur soccer league consisting of teams from San Francisco, Cali ...

(SFSFL) that was rising to challenge the dominance of teams like the

Greek Americans Greek Americans ( el, Ελληνοαμερικανοί ''Ellinoamerikanoí'' ''Ellinoamerikánoi'' ) are Americans of full or partial Greek ancestry. The lowest estimate is that 1.2 million Americans are of Greek descent while the highest es ...

. The team gained successive promotions to the top division in the space of five years. By the 1991–92 season, the club had won the SFSFL championship and had reached the final of the

National Amateur Cup The National Amateur Cup, also known as the USASA Amateur Cup, is an American soccer competition open to all amateur teams affiliated with the United States Soccer Federation through United States Adult Soccer Association (USASA). In 1923, U.S ...

. The following season, El Faro retained the title as 'Club Deportivo Mexico'. In 1993, San Francisco C.D. Mexico won the

U.S. Open Cup The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, commonly known as the U.S. Open Cup (USOC), is a Single-elimination tournament, knockout cup competition in men's Soccer in the United States, soccer in the United States of America. It is the oldest ongoing nati ...

, an American soccer competition open to all

United States Soccer Federation The United States Soccer Federation (USSF), commonly referred to as U.S. Soccer, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the official governing body of the sport of soccer in the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, the federation is ...

(USSF) affiliated teams. The team pulled off wins against the defending tournament champion San Jose Oaks, Milwaukee Bavarian SC, before defeating United German Hungarians in the Final. As U.S. Open Cup champions, C.D. Mexico qualified for the

1994 CONCACAF Cup Winners Cup The 1994 CONCACAF Cup Winners Cup The CONCACAF Cup Winners Cup was an international association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily ...

and played

Club Necaxa Impulsora del Deportivo Necaxa S.A. de C.V. (); often simply known as Necaxa, is a Mexican professional football club in Liga MX based in the city of Aguascalientes. It plays in the Estadio Victoria. History Foundation (Light and Power Company ...

of the Mexican First Division in the quarterfinals. They lost 5–1 in San Jose. When the California Premier Soccer Association (CSPA) was formed in 1993, CD Mexico was one of the SFSFL representatives along with

Greek-American A.C. Greek-American Athletic Club was a semi-professional soccer club from San Francisco, California that played in the San Francisco Soccer Football League. They are the most successful team in Francisco Soccer Football League's history with 16 title ...

, SF United, and Concordia. The CPSA was developed as a 'super league' composed of teams from the SFSFL, Peninsula Soccer League, and the San Joaquin Valley Soccer League. The team, returning to their original name El Farolito, won multiple titles over the next two and a half decades. On November 20, 2017, El Farolito announced it would field a team in the

for the 2018 season.

Year-by-year

Honors

*Division 1 Champions (11): 1991–92, 1992–93, 1995–96, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2017 *Playoff Champions (6): 2007, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017

* Golden Gate Conference Champions:

2018 File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...

*Champions (1)

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...

*Participants (3):

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

CONCACAF Cup Winners Cup The CONCACAF Cup Winners Cup was an international association football club competition held from 1991 to 1998. The cup was between the winners of their nation's domestic cup competitions, which posed a problem as some participating countries did ...

*Participants (1):

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...

Notes

References

External links

Official TwitterSFSFL Team Page
{{California sports Soccer clubs in San Francisco 1985 establishments in California U.S. clubs in CONCACAF Cup Winners' Cup

Farolito A ''luminaria'', a small bonfire are lit during Las Posadas, a nine-day holiday running December 16–24. Farolito is a small paper lantern (commonly a candle set in some sand inside a paper bag), particularly in the broader Southwestern Un ...