The most popular sport in TDCorp Territory has a long history!
Football was already established when the St. Kiltan expeditions arrived, and the beginnings of a league existed as a series of traditional confrontations between the Chilango settlements on the coast. This tlachtli, as it was known in Mixtuptecan, was taken up as a major event in the trading festivals that had taken the place of the religion-inspired reunions of the old Xochimeca calendar, and the St.Kiltan colonialists contributed their own obsession with the game and their distinctive, passing-oriented style to the mix.
A league after the St.Kiltan mold was one of the first organizations to arise when St. Kilta asserted sovereignty, with clearly defined zones: Coast, Miners’ and Welfenian. The OTM (Otéagu Tlachtli Mecatlaxalli, Otéagan Football League) sent representatives to St. Kilta as part of the overall management of the colony, and the Otéagan league champion played the homeland’s league winner yearly for the Kiltan Cup; the Coast region almost always provided this champion, as the most developed of the footballing regions.
As the regions and the game evolved, the natural progression towards more spectators, more teams (beyond the initial integrated sports clubs with a football branch) and professionalization led to the regions becoming leagues in their own right, and to the establishment of an interleague competition to close off the footballing year; this competition took the form of a league-format challenge between selected teams that brought the best players of each league together. After the reorganization that made OTM the supervisory entity for the whole territory, the three Leagues (Coastal: Liga Costera, Miner’s: Liga Minera, and Welfenian: Líog Welf) established a slowly growing infrastructure that included professional and amateur sides, integrating the clubs that up to then had been the backbone of the sport, and regulating competition, player development, and marketing (always important in the money-driven Otéagan society). This autonomous process was reinforced by the Otago Incident, which uncoupled OTM and the Leagues from any interaction with the St. Kiltan football scene.
The league operation was almost unchanged by the privatization process in 298; however, 299 brought tremendous upheaval with it. The reinsertion into the international community after privatization and the lifting of sanctions were used by the OTM to gain a presence at the Vex level in the recently organized IVEFA and NOVEFA, and representatives were sent in January, 299 to start the process that would lead to affiliation.
Contrary to the experience of Otéagan participation in other Vexillian organizations (and maybe because of TDCorp’s hands-off approach to the football world), this led to protracted and complicated negotiations, mainly regarding the formation and maintenance of national teams. The OTM insisted on having the champion club sides represent the territory on both club and national competitions; this condition was initially rejected by IVEFA and NOVEFA, and it would remain a sore point in the talks.
The second great event in 299 rocked the football world as thoroughly as everything else in the Territory: the surprising breakup of WWWW and the very fast settlement and development process in the New Territories, with a surface area bigger than the Old Lease, meant a sudden expansion of the sport and a need for totally different structures and special conditions to adapt the sport to a dry, very hot environment which challenged players, referees and the Leagues in a wholly new way. The biggest upheaval was the decision to form an entirely new League, the aptly-named Desert League, which solved the conflicts among the 3 extant Leagues on affiliation matters; the new League became a focal point for new power brokers and a different ideas on the management and organization of the sport.
One of the first consequences of the new four-part structure was the reorganization and formalization of the inter-league competition; it was established in a yearly format, replacing the rather informal calendar that had been used for decades, and it was named, somewhat unoriginally as The Tournament (El Torneo).
On the international side of the matter, a first, tentative agreement was reached in order to allow the new territory to take part in the Copa Vexanova organized by NOVEFA for 299 in Ordland; the reigning champion, Blaukreuz Pozzolan from the inland port of Tuano, was hurriedly named as the territory’s representative and sent to the slaughter.
The blue/whites were duly massacred by the then-powerful Northern Gronk and Bowdani sides, 3-1 and 6-2; despite showing initiative and a promising offense, the first Otéagan incursion into international football was an unmitigated disaster.
This result was used by NOVEFA, IVEFA and even by some internal media as an argument in favor of setting up a proper national team infrastructure; however, this was against both the OTM’s tradition as a negotiating body between the powerful regions, and against the quiet but powerful voice of TDCorp, who sent a brief but peremptory message containing a demand to better the squads’ level before attempting anything involving representation again.
With negotiations effectively stalled, the league decided to focus on attracting investment and talent form the football powerhouses of Westria and Eastern Zartania while building up youth talent; this led to the founding of new teams in the bigger cities’ barrios, the smaller cities, and the “new towns” springing all over the New Territories. This infusion of new capital and new blood from the massive immigration into the New Territories changed the league’s structure and the player pool, which had been rather thin and haphazardly-managed until then.
Out of this crucible came some credible club sides, including a revived Blaukreuz, the SUOO and Cuenca Minera, Carnes Supremas de Tacubaya, the industry-sponsored RFE teams, the university sides based in Chilangotitlán and Welfen Pass, and a formerly obscure club which would achieve enduring fame, coming from the wild and woolly barrio of Iztacalco in the eastern reaches of the capital.
Iztacalco has carried the territory's football reputation far and wide, establishing themselves as a scrappy team with a strong defense, and a provider of entertaining upsets, especially in their first 2 Vexillium Cups, where they elbowed out Cruisana and the 306 hosts, Davenport, for a place in the second round, and the 317 Vexillium Cup, coming back from a 4-0 defeat against Draconia to beat Svarthaedir 2-0 and Nwandiqwe 3-1 for a place in the second round.